Flesh Wounds
by doorways
Summary: Before Freddy Krueger was the Springwood Slasher, he was just a frightened little boy. Full summary inside.
1. The Belt

**Summary:** Before Freddy Krueger was the Springwood Slasher, he was just a frightened little boy. But he was the Bastard Son of a Hundred Maniacs, after all, and there's no escaping something like that. No matter how good his intentions may have been in the beginning, they were squeezed out of him, and he was left sick and twisted – and he changed, from Little Freddy Krueger, Son of a Hundred Maniacs, into something much, much worse.

**Author's note:** Welcome to my crazy attempt at Camp Nanowrimo! Please bear in mind that it was written in the space of two weeks and is largely unedited, and I've never attempted writing for the NOES fandom before. However (as I'm sure you all know), as a writer I essentially live for feedback, and I would love to hear what you thought worked, what you didn't, whether you liked it, whether it was awful, etc. I can use this for when I go to rewrite, or when I'm writing future stories!

This story does start off quite slowly, dealing with Freddy's childhood, but it follows him through into adulthood as well and picks up.

You do not need to be familiar with NOES canon to read this fic, as it is just backstory. I apologise for any details I may have gotten incorrect; like I said, I've never written for the fandom before and I'm just going by what I could pick up from the movies and the Wiki. ;)

**WARNING:** For those of you who are unfamiliar with the canon and have somehow stumbled upon this, this story deals with a number of dark themes. Main warnings are for rape, self-harm, murder, implied paedophilia and all sorts of abuse, though various other dark and sensitive subjects may come up.

**DISCLAIMER:** Freddy is messed-up, and this story expresses viewpoints that I do not in any way, shape or form condone. Also, I don't own him.

Anyway... Enjoy!

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**Flesh Wounds**

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**part i: the belt**

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Freddy could hear Mr Underwood stomping about upstairs, and it frightened him. Mr Underwood had been drinking, and Freddy knew that drinking was a bad thing. It made people change. The television had shown him so. But when the people on TV got drunk, they stumbled about comically, and said silly things and talked in slurred voices. Mr Underwood wasn't like that. When he got drunk – and he got drunk a lot – he got angry, mostly with Freddy. When the drunk people on TV got angry, they usually ended up having fights and yelling, smashing glass on tables and throwing themselves at one another, but Mr Underwood wasn't like that when he was angry. He was angry in a quieter sort of way, though he did yell a bit. But mostly he just yelled for Freddy to "get over here now!" or else to "get away from me, boy!"

Freddy understood anger. He understood that a person could be angry all the time and not show it. He certainly was. He was angry at Mr Underwood all the time, even when Mr Underwood wasn't yelling at him. But he wasn't allowed to get angry or yell back or tell Mr Underwood that he was wrong and that he, Freddy, _was_ being good. Yelling was for grown ups, and Mr Underwood had done a Good Thing by taking Freddy in, and it was now Freddy's job to repay him by making him coffee and cleaning his shoes and taking out the trash and cleaning the kitchen and all manner of other jobs. Freddy knew that Mr Underwood could have very well done this by himself, but he didn't, for some reason. When Freddy had been _little_, he had thought that it was all right – because Mr Underwood was the grown up, and he knew what should be done and by whom and when. But Freddy was bigger now – nearly seven – and he realised now that Mr Underwood did not understand what he was supposed to be doing. He was too drunk all the time to know, and too full of hate to care what Freddy thought.

Freddy could have told him that he didn't want to do as he was told, but that would have earned him a slap with the Belt. If there was one thing Freddy hated more than his foster father, it was his foster father's Belt. The Belt was big and black and made of leather, and it was wide and had a big buckle on the end. Sometimes, when Mr Underwood wasn't particularly drunk, he would use the leathery end, the one with the little holes, to beat Freddy with. But sometimes, when he was too hammered to see straight, or when Freddy had done something particularly bad, he would use the other end, the one with the buckle, and that was what Freddy lived in fear of. It was hard and cold and left deep purple welts on his back and his legs, and sometimes he couldn't walk right for a week after he was hit with the buckle. He didn't get hit with the buckled end very much now. He was good now; he knew just how Mr Underwood liked his coffee, and not to disturb him with such trivial things as 'nightmares' when he was trying to unwind with his poker buddies at night.

Freddy didn't know quite what Mr Underwood needed to unwind from, because he didn't have a job, but he supposed it must be something very big and very important and very Grown Up to make Mr Underwood so angry all the time. Mr Underwood didn't sleep much, either. He drank until he passed out on the couch, and then when he woke up, usually in the afternoons, he cursed Freddy for not waking him up sooner. Freddy didn't even try to make him understand any more that he _had_ tried, he really had, but Mr Underwood simply couldn't hear him. When he woke up in a bad mood, it was usually, he said, because of a Hang Over (whatever that was) and he stomped around the kitchen groaning and pounding his fists against the wall. Then he would have another drink. Drinking, Freddy understood, made the Hang Over go away.

When Mr Underwood wasn't drunk – or too drunk, anyway – he would leave Freddy alone. Freddy didn't mind that. Sometimes he got lonely, playing out in the garden by himself, but he preferred it to Mr Underwood's constant threats. There weren't many other children on the street on which he lived, and the ones that there were tended to stay away from him. He had overheard one of their mothers telling them to do so, once.

"Don't you go near that house," she had said, as she straightened his jacket before sending him off down the street to catch the school bus. Freddy was lurking just around the corner. The ball he had been playing with had rolled across the street and he was only there to get it back. "There's a man who lives there, a very sick man, and I don't want you getting hurt. Now have a nice day at school, I love you." And she had kissed his cheek and sent him on his way.

Freddy had pondered this later. Mr Underwood wasn't sick, was he? Freddy had heard about people getting sick. A girl in his class at school's grandfather had caught something called Cancer, and from what Freddy had gleaned, that was the worst thing that could happen. That was the sickest of the sick. If you caught the Cancer, there was no coming back from it, and you would die. It was the same with other sicknesses, too, only most of those you could get better from, like the flu or the measles. But Mr Underwood didn't have the flu or the measles. Freddy wondered if he had a worse sickness, maybe like a sort of Cancer. He wondered if Mr Underwood would die. And that scared him, because he thought he would like that. But he had to berate himself for thinking it, and he rubbed sand from his sand box into his eyes to punish himself. He shouldn't be thinking things like that. If Mr Underwood knew, he would do much worse to him, and Freddy didn't want that. He didn't want Mr Underwood to think he was ungrateful to him. Mr Underwood had taken him in out of the kindness of his own heart – he didn't need to, and he certainly didn't _want_ Freddy. No-one wanted Freddy, Mr Underwood made sure Freddy knew that. If Mr Underwood was gone or dead, Freddy wouldn't have a home, and he wouldn't have anyone to look after him, and he might have died himself, and he didn't want that at all.

But he didn't really like spending time with Mr Underwood, either, and Mr Underwood didn't like spending time with him. Although Mr Underwood said that everything he did was for Freddy's own good – he was giving him his Medicine, he said, to help him be a better person – Freddy wasn't sure he liked it. But sometimes, Mr Underwood said, people don't like the things that are good for them. Freddy wondered if he was sick, too, but he decided he must have one of the lesser illnesses, not something he could die from. If he was taking medicine, it must be all right. But the Medicine didn't really seem to be working; no matter how much of it Mr Underwood administrated, Freddy always seemed to need more. So Freddy tried to avoid Mr Underwood as much as possible – he realised, now, that there was a correlation to the amount of Medicine Mr Underwood claimed he needed, and the amount that Mr Underwood drank. Perhaps, thought Freddy, neither he nor Mr Underwood were sick at all, but it was all in Mr Underwood's head. But he did not allow himself to think this for very long, because he wasn't supposed to question Mr Underwood: he was supposed to Do As He Was Told.

When Mr Underwood left him to his own devices, Freddy, being largely ignored by the other children in the neighbourhood, would play on his own in the back yard. He had a tree and a sand pit there, which he very much liked. He didn't have very many toys – Mr Underwood didn't believe he deserved them – but he had a baseball bat and ball that he had found at the park one day, and other bits of discarded and broken toys that he had found as he walked to and from school. Sometimes he found them by the side of the road, or lying on the floor of the long tiled corridors at school. It didn't count as stealing, he reckoned, because they didn't belong to anyone any more, and they were unwanted, and he was just taking them in, rather like Mr Underwood had done for him. But he was nice to his toys, because it didn't make sense for him to give them Medicine when they hadn't done anything wrong. But then again, Freddy wasn't sure he had done anything wrong either. He knew he made mistakes, but he tried. He tried not to steal, and he tried to get the coffee right, and he tried not to made a mess on the kitchen floor with his muddy sneakers. He tried. He tried to be a good boy. If he had children, he knew, he would be the best daddy in the whole world.

It wasn't that Mr Underwood was a bad daddy; Freddy would never have thought that. At least, he would never have admitted to thinking that. But Mr Underwood wasn't his _real_ daddy, and Mr Underwood didn't allow Freddy to call him 'Daddy'. Mr Underwood was a Foster Father, and Freddy had learned in school that that was what they called the people who took in the kids that nobody else wanted. A boy in his class had told him so.

"You only live with him because your real parents didn't want you," said the boy, who was bigger than him. "He only looks after you because he's paid money by the President."

"Hush, now," said their teacher. "That just isn't true. I'm sure Mr Underwood cares for you very much, Freddy."

Freddy was sure it was true that Mr Underwood _cared_ for him (why else would he spend so much time giving him his Medicine?), but Mr Underwood didn't _love_ him, not in the way a parent should. He insisted on being called 'Mr Underwood', or 'Sir' at all times, never 'Daddy'. Some of the other kids in Freddy's class knew this, and when they decided that he was the kid they'd be picking on for the day, they usually started with that.

"My mommy and daddy are broken up, but my daddy comes round _every_ weekend and he always brings me candy and he takes me to see the movies," said one little girl, whose name was Alyssa and whom Freddy despised. She had long blonde hair that was always in pigtails and those forget-me-not blue eyes that everyone coloured in pictures and that all the grown ups said were so pretty. They said she looked like an angel. Freddy loathed the sight of her. "Where's your daddy, Freddy?"

"He comes to see me every _other_ weekend," Freddy invented. "He's... a movie star, so he's really busy."

"Oh, yeah?" said Alyssa. "What movies has he been in? What's his name? I've seen lots and lots and lots of movies, I'd probably know who he is."

"Uh, he's... Charles Krueger," said Freddy. "My middle name was named after him."

"I've never heard of him," said Alyssa, wrinkling her nose and flicking her pigtails over her shoulder. "I bet he wasn't in any _good_ movies."

"He was," said Freddy frantically, and his eyes fell on a magazine on the desk near Alyssa. They had been using them earlier as part of an arts and crafts project, cutting out pictures of people's eyes and lips to use in a montage. It was part of the Fun Friday lessons. "He was in lots of good movies. That's him there." And he pointed to the man on the open page of the magazine. He wasn't distinctive at first glance; he was what was considered good-looking in the movie industry, but he was rather forgettable – a straight nose, pleasantly shaped lips and thickly-lashed brown eyes and hair.

"Oh," said Alyssa. "Well, I haven't seen them so they can't be that good." And she flounced off, taking her pigtails and forget-me-not-blue eyes with her.

Freddy watched her go, and was miserable about the fact that what she said was true. He had no idea where his father was, or why he didn't seem to want him. He knew that his mother was dead, and he understood that she wasn't coming back. He liked to think that she had wanted him when she was alive, more than anything in the world, he thought, before they were torn apart. But he didn't know who his father was, or why he didn't come to see him every weekend and bring him candy and take him to the movies. For all he knew, that man in the magazine could very well be his father.

So he tore that page from the magazine – it wasn't stealing; they were going to cut it up anyway – and he folded it and put it in the back pocket of his jeans and he carried it with him everywhere. A part of him knew it was silly, but a part of him really wanted to believe that it was his daddy, and that he was out in California making movies, and he was really busy right now, saving the world from aliens and being in magazines, but one day soon, when he was finished being busy, he would come to Springwood for Freddy. And then Freddy and his daddy would be just like all the other families, and Mr Underwood wouldn't need to look after him or give him his Medicine any more, and Freddy and his daddy would drive a red open top car along the Californian coast licking ice creams and life would be good.

That was one of the things Freddy invented, anyway, when he was playing alone in the garden. He invented lots of things, though, and the stories about his daddy sometimes played a part in them. He would take out the crumpled piece of paper and place it up against the tree, sometimes with a little rock to hold it in place if it was slightly windy that day. Most of his games involved the broken doll he'd found, and a small plastic dinosaur. The doll was bigger than the dinosaur, which was small enough to stand in his palm, so he had to get creative, and pretend that the dinosaur had been hit with a shrink ray (like he saw in sci-fi movies when Mr Underwood left the TV on) or that the woman had been hit with an enlarging ray (same business). They had a car – a black Jeep – that they travelled in, though the doll was really too big to sit in it and sometimes the dinosaur got lost under the seats. One of the wheels was missing, anyway, so it didn't really matter too much as they couldn't use it for travelling. The picture of his 'daddy' watched them, and sometimes Freddy made him play a part in the games, too. He gave him a deep, gravelly voice – a manly sort of voice, the sort that Freddy thought a father should have, not a growly voice like Mr Underwood.

Mr Underwood didn't really like Freddy playing in the garden, and sometimes he would call him inside even if there wasn't anything he wanted Freddy to do. He said playing in the garden was a bad thing to do because it made it seem as though Freddy didn't care about the jobs that needed doing. It showed a bad image to the neighbours, Mr Underwood said. It made Freddy look like a Waste of Space (which he was), and that meant he needed to take his Medicine. It helped him to be a better person.

But when Mr Underwood just left him to his own devices for a while, he was happy. Mostly. He was happy in the garden, where he had the picture of his daddy and his toys. But when Mr Underwood told Freddy to leave _him_ alone, that usually meant he had to go up to his room. Freddy hated his room. He wasn't allowed toys in the house, on account of Mr Underwood thinking they were dirty. So when he was in his room he was completely alone. All he had was the picture of his daddy, and he couldn't really play much with it on its own. He couldn't do the voice, either, because Mr Underwood would hear and he would get cross. Mr Underwood didn't like to be disturbed when he was watching TV or playing poker, so Freddy had to be very quiet. It was very lonely in his room, and at night, it got very dark, because there was no light bulb in his lamp. The only light came from the streetlights outside, and that wasn't very bright at all, and it made the shadows dance in funny ways.

All Freddy could see or hear some nights were the funny dancing shadows (which weren't really funny, though he tried to laugh at them) and the sounds of men yelling and laughing downstairs. When he fell asleep, sometimes those things bled through, and he had horrible nightmares, about dinosaurs and strange men who claimed to be his father and wanted to take him away to 'look after him', and Mr Underwood chasing him with the Belt.

But he still preferred being alone with the nightmares to being with Mr Underwood, because he knew the nightmares weren't real, but Mr Underwood and the Belt were, very, very real. He didn't trouble Mr Underwood with the nightmares any more, because Mr Underwood didn't seem to think they were important. Everyone has them, he'd told Freddy, and Freddy's nightmares weren't anything special.


	2. The Son of a Hundred Maniacs

**part ii: the son of a hundred maniacs**

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Freddy had learned that if he was ever angry or scared, he was to keep it inside. He was to keep quiet and out of trouble, and try and be invisible when Mr Underwood was around. He wasn't to talk to any of the kids in the neighbourhood, because when he tried to join in their games they simply looked at him and walked away. Freddy knew that that was normal, because, after all, who would _want_ to play with him? But at the age of seven, he had very little control over his emotions. He wasn't always able to keep the anger and the hurt inside.

Sometimes, when Mr Underwood left him alone and he was playing in the garden, he'd come across ants, or spiders. A boy in his class at school had told him that if you held a magnifying glass over a trail of ants at _just_ the right angle, it would create a shaft of light that would burn them. It was funny, he said, and Freddy thought it probably was, but he didn't have a magnifying glass. The ants were almost too small to see without one, though, so instead, Freddy caught spiders. The spiders caught other insects, too, like flies and moths that became entangled in their webs, but the spiders' long legs made them easy to grab hold of and pick up. Freddy liked to watch them scuttle across their webs before he'd pinch one of their spindly limbs and hoist it into the air, dangling it in front of his nose. Then he'd pick the legs off one by one, and watch at it wobbled helplessly on the ground.

That was funny, too.

He never showed Mr Underwood that he was scared or hurt or angry, though. He only ever showed him that he was sorry. The sorrier he was, the less Mr Underwood would beat him. Mr Underwood was not a _bad_ man, Freddy knew that – in fact, he was a very, very good man indeed, for taking him in, yes, he'd reminded Freddy of that fact a thousand times. If he saw that Freddy was sorry, he knew that the Medicine had worked and that Freddy didn't need any more, so he would stop.

On one occasion, however, and it was an occasion Freddy looked back on in great shame and with regret, he hadn't been able to hold his anger inside. Mr Underwood had come to pick him up from school at lunch time, because Freddy had a tummy bug, and he needed Bed Rest. The principal wouldn't let Freddy walk home on his own, although he'd said he was perfectly capable, and she'd called up Mr Underwood to see that he got home safely. When she had done this, she smiled at Freddy, as if to say, _There, you see? Everything will be all right._ Freddy had had to smile back at her (he should be grateful she was helping him, yes, he should), although he knew very well that Mr Underwood would be furious at being called to come to the school in the middle of the day.

And he was, too. Rightly so, he'd said. All the other children were out playing in the yard, and Freddy had to walk through them to reach the school gates, where Mr Underwood was standing. He was swaying slightly, but was upright, which wasn't too bad. That usually didn't mean he'd be hit too hard with the Belt. Maybe one or two slaps, and then he'd be allowed to go and play in the sandbox – or watch TV, maybe; sometimes when he was sick Mr Underwood let him watch cartoons if he wanted to go to the store. But Mr Underwood glowered at him from beneath heavy brows as Freddy left the school gates, and as soon as the boy approached him he dealt him a smack across the face with the back of his hand.

The force of the blow almost knocked Freddy over, and, to his great shame, tears sprang to his eyes at once. He could feel his cheek turning red, and he pressed his palm to it, stumbling backwards with a yelp of pain.

"Whaddidya hafta get them to call me for, eh?" said Mr Underwood, and his words slid together. "I was in the middle of somethin' _important_."

"Sorry," whispered Freddy, hoarsely. "I asked them not to." He could feel his entire face thrumming with his heartbeat, and he wondered if it would bruise. He would have to explain that to the teacher – he thought she was a nice lady, but Mr Underwood said she was a nosy bitch, and Freddy wasn't sure what to believe.

"Well, that just ain't good enough," snarled Mr Underwood, and he struck Freddy again, this time with his fist. His aim was careless, and he knocked him on the side of the head. Freddy stumbled sideways, almost lost his balance. And then he lost his temper.

"I tried! I tried, all right! I always try! I can't do any more than try! It's not fair! You think I do it to be bad but I don't! Why do you hate me?! It's not _fair_!"

Had Freddy been older than seven, he would have understood that life just isn't fair, and standing up for himself was about to earn him an unjust punishment. But he didn't understand that, and nor did he care. He was furious, and very frightened at the same time, and his throat clenched up and his hands balled into fists as his face reddened. He wanted to stand up to Mr Underwood, he really did (not to be bad, mind you, just because Mr Underwood was a little bit messed up in the head, Freddy knew, and didn't really know what he was doing all the time), but the man was bigger than him, and there was absolutely nothing he could do.

Before he knew what was happening, Mr Underwood grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him against the fence that ran around the edge of the school. His face was very close to Freddy's and Freddy could smell the beer on his breath. Mr Underwood didn't say anything for a few moments, and nor did Freddy. The man's hands were shaking, trembling, perhaps with anger and perhaps with intoxication, and his breath was rough. Freddy was aware, in those few moments, that the voices and the noises of the children in the yard had stopped, and although his back was to them, he knew they were watching.

"Don't you _ever_," snarled Mr Underwood, "speak to me like that."

Freddie whimpered. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

"I'm sorry _what_?"

"I'm sorry, sir."

"I was good enough to take you in, you remember that?"

"Yes, sir, I do, I do..."

"Then _why_," said Mr Underwood, and he slammed Freddy harder into the fence, "d'you act like such a brat?"

"I don't know, sir, I'm very sorry, Mr Underwood..."

"And you wonder," said Mr Underwood, his lips curling into a sneer, "why I hate you. Everybody hates you, boy. You ain't never done nothin' for nobody." He slammed Freddy back into the fence, again – and then again, and again, and again. "You ain't never – done nothin'—Even your own – mother – didn't wancha—"

"That's not true," whispered Freddy hoarsely, and he felt something burning at the back of his throat.

"Oh, yeah?" said Mr Underwood. "Why _would_ she want you? Look at you. And you know what? She never meant to have you. You—" slam "—meant—" slam "—nothin' to her. She only had ya because—" slam "—she was raped—" slam "—hundreds o' times—" slam "—by a bunch o' lunatics. And we ended up with _you_. Little Freddy Krueger, the bastard son of a hundred maniacs. Your mom ain't even dead, she just didn't want you. Who _would_ want you, eh? Who would?"

Freddy didn't know what to say, so he just gulped uselessly, like a fish does. His mother wasn't dead? But she hadn't wanted him? Why? What was being raped, anyway? Was it like dying? Freddy knew what happened when people made babies; he'd heard the other, slightly older kids giggling about it at the back of class. Was it something to do with that? Was it a bad thing? It must be a bad thing, the way Mr Underwood had said it. If his mother was still alive, maybe she could take him away from Mr Underwood. Maybe they could have a proper family—Except that wouldn't work, because Mr Underwood had just told him so. He looked into the man's eyes, and realised he was speaking.

"...and that stupid picture you carry all the time, give it to me."

"My—my daddy?" asked Freddy, stupidly.

"No, not your daddy, that stupid picture from the magazine," scoffed Mr Underwood. He let go of Freddy, so that he could reach into his pocket. Slowly, Freddy pulled the picture out and smoothed it. The lines from where it had been crumpled were still visible, making it bumpy and making his daddy's face look a bit wobbly, but his smiling brown eyes reassured Freddy for a brief moment that it was all right. The picture was a bit dog-eared and greying, but his daddy's face made up for that. He couldn't help but smile at it, remembering the adventures they had had together, and his daddy's voice, which in itself was kind and warm and reassuring.

"Give it to me," growled Mr Underwood, and reluctantly, Freddy handed it over. And Mr Underwood grabbed it from him and tore it into many little pieces. He released them into the breeze as Freddy watched dumbstruck. Some of them just landed on the ground, but some fluttered a few feet away. "There, now," said Mr Underwood. "Now you can stop playin' those silly games, boy. That ain't your daddy, no-one knows just who your daddy is. Come on." He grabbed him by the wrist. It's time to go home. You have to take your medicine."

And he wrenched Freddy away from where he stood, pulled him along the street as the boy gazed with desperation at the pieces of paper that were still fluttering on the breeze.

When they got home that afternoon, Freddy had to take a great deal of his Medicine. He had to take so much it made him feel ill, more ill than he already was, and he stayed up late into the night crouched over the toilet, vomiting. Mr Underwood didn't hear; he was passed out on the couch, and the TV was blaring. But Freddy preferred being sick to having nightmares, he thought. He didn't know what he'd dream about, having found that the man in the magazine was not his daddy. He had known all along, of course, that he'd just made him up, but he had grown to love him just as much as he would have loved his real father, and certainly more than he loved Mr Underwood (though he had to punish himself in his head and call himself names for even thinking that, though it was true). He didn't want to dream about his mother in the midst of a crowd of lunatics doing the Rape thing, whatever it was.

The next day at school, he stood at the back of the class as it began, thinking. He liked to watch the class hamster run in its wheel when he thought. There was no Mr Underwood at school to yell at him, only the nice teacher, who would tell him gently when it was time to sit down and start his work. Freddy would always obey, because he liked her, and he didn't want to be in trouble with her, or make her angry or disappoint her the way he disappointed Mr Underwood.

But he shouldn't _be_ a disappointment to Mr Underwood, a voice in his head told him. He tried his best, but it wasn't good enough. It wasn't as though Mr Underwood did half the things Freddy did: he didn't make his own coffee, shine his own shoes, take out the trash... All he did was lie on the couch and drink and watch TV and play poker, and Freddy was the one who had to take the Medicine? It wasn't fair. And all these other kids didn't care about him or understand. They were happy with their 'proper' homes, and their 'proper' families who wanted them, going about their lives as if Freddy didn't matter, because he didn't. Not to them, and not to anyone. And here was this hamster happily running in its wheel as though nothing was wrong in the world.

Freddy was suddenly irrationally angry at the hamster, and before he knew what he was doing, he had reached into its cage and pulled it out. There was a hammer sitting on the bench at the side, probably from part of the arts and crafts project the teacher had been helping them work on. The hammer was a Grown Up tool, and Freddy knew he oughtn't to touch it, but he wasn't thinking straight. He picked it up, and before he knew it, he had raised it above the hamster's head and brought it crashing down.

There was a splat, and a squealing squeak of pain, and blood splattered the bench and the hammer and Freddy's sweater.

He was going to have to explain to Mr Underwood how that had happened...

And then from behind him, he heard one of the kids laughing. "Freak," the kid said, and then, "Son of a hundred maniacs..." And then he began to repeat himself, chanting.

"_Son of a hundred maniacs, son of a hundred maniacs_..."

There was Alyssa's voice, and Trent and Jessica and Brian and Wes, and he'd thought they were nearly his friends – at least, they didn't pick on him. Except now they were, and he hated them in that moment; he hated them with every fibre of his body.

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Reviews are appreciated! Thank you!


	3. Flesh Wounds

**part iii: flesh wounds**

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Mr Underwood didn't know or care what happened to Freddy when he was at school, but Freddy heard the telephone ring one morning when he was out playing in his sand pit – rather morosely, now, without the picture of his daddy to oversee his adventures. Mr Underwood answered with a grunt, and then Freddy heard him yelling – but he was yelling in a strange, strangled sort of way. It sounded as though he was trying to stay calm, even though he was angry, and Freddy wasn't used to that. But when Mr Underwood came outside to bring Freddy in, he told him to go and watch cartoons on the TV. He said he was going out for a while. Freddy sat for a long while alone on the couch. He didn't dare move. He didn't enjoy the cartoons, but he didn't want Mr Underwood to think he wasn't doing as he was told again. He had done enough bad things lately, and he didn't want to have to face the Belt again. But when Mr Underwood returned he was whistling – or trying to, anyway – which was something he never did. And he had a bag from the grocery store with him.

Freddy heard the door rattle open and he heard Mr Underwood go into the kitchen. He slid off the couch and peered around the doorway. Mr Underwood was unpacking a brown paper bag, and putting what was in it into the fridge. Freddy saw bacon, and eggs, and sausages, and milk, and packages that could have been anything. He swallowed as Mr Underwood knelt down to place them at the back of the fridge, and drew further behind the doorway. He had forgotten to clean the fridge, and the dribbles of beer and other things that had spilt from split food packages were hardened into it, sticky and brown. If Mr Underwood noticed, he would stop whistling and come for Freddy – but Mr Underwood didn't seem to notice. He just pushed the food further back into the fridge, making room for it amidst all his beers, and when he'd unloaded the bag he stood up and swung the door shut.

"Freddy," he called, and it wasn't an angry shout. It was just a shout, the sort he would use if he wanted to make himself heard. Freddy wasn't too familiar with that tone of voice, but it wasn't the one he used when he was about to take off his Belt, so he came hesitantly around the corner and into the doorway. "There you are," said Mr Underwood, looking down at him, and the corners of his lips twitched, as though he was trying to smile – though the sight of Freddy seemed to make that a rather difficult task. "Little Freddy. Freddy, I got a call. I got a call from the school. They say I need to be a better father. Do you think I need to be a better father?" He was speaking slowly, as though he was trying to catch the words as they tumbled from his brain into his mouth. He wasn't slurring very much.

"No, sir," said Freddy, almost at once, but leaving a short pause so that he sounded genuine. He wouldn't want Mr Underwood to think he was only saying it, that he had some sort of answer already ready. Mr Underwood hated it when Freddy Talked Back.

"Good boy," said Mr Underwood, and he leant forward and ruffled Freddy's hair clumsily. "I'm makin' meatloaf." And then he turned away, mumbling to himself, and started wandering about the kitchen, looking in cupboards and drawers, pulling out bowls and pots and knives and forks. Freddy backed away slowly, and went upstairs to his room. He didn't trust Mr Underwood around the knives, although he was sure Mr Underwood would never do anything deliberately to _hurt_ him. But Freddy thought that sometimes his hands were a little shaky, and sometimes he got very angry, and being cut with a knife was the very worst thing that Freddy could imagine.

He hated being hit with the Belt; it bruised and it stung, but it wasn't as bad as being cut with something sharp, like a knife. When Freddy had been _very_ little, perhaps four or five, he had found a little cat in the garden, mewling in the bushes that hedged the lawn in. It was a ball of striped fluff, black and white and brown, and it had big yellow eyes, like tiny streetlamps. Freddy wondered where its mommy and daddy were, because it looked too small to be out on its own. It was very skinny, too, and Freddy wanted to feed it. He picked it up, and held it in front of his face, and told it in his little-boy way that he would look after it. His hands were clamped around its middle, and he could feel its heart drumming against its rib cage and his palms, really fast: _drum drum drum drum drum drum drum_. And it cried very loudly, even though Freddy told it to be quiet.

"Shut up!" he told it, squeezing it – didn't it know it was safe now? – but it didn't shut up, and he shook it. It lashed out at him with all its legs, too long for something that size, soft at the bottoms but ending in claws that were long and curved and so very, very sharp.

They raked into his skin; it was young skin, still not used to the outside world, and grabbed it, pulling it apart and rending it, making it bleed. The blood seeped out in tiny red rivers, and seeing the white skin peeling back from it made Freddy feel faint. With a cry of pain and confusion, he threw the kitten from him and ran back into the house. He didn't see where the kitten landed, but he hoped it was okay. A picture book he'd read once had told him that cats always landed on their feet. But the next day he saw a couple of big black birds hopping around the place where he'd found the kitten, and something told him that that was a bad omen.

Mr Underwood had yelled at him for getting blood on the carpet.

That night, the night when Mr Underwood had scared Freddy by taking out the knives, it ended up that he did make meatloaf. Freddy didn't like meatloaf; it was red and brown and lumpy and tasted of cardboard. But then, that was the school meatloaf, and this was home made. If possible, it was worse, though. It seemed like Mr Underwood had only the faintest idea of how to make it; it wasn't really a loaf, it was just a mess of brown stuff. But Freddy didn't like to say that – especially when Mr Underwood wasn't being angry – so he tried to eat it. He pushed most of it around his plate, and played with a lump of gristle in between his teeth while Mr Underwood talked a bit.

Usually they ate dinner in silence, in front of the TV, but tonight they were in the dining room, at the table, and Mr Underwood broke the silence every few minutes by telling Freddy that he was going to get a job, and that Freddy had better respect that and treat him more like a father, and not show him up like he did in front of the school again, and did Freddy want more ketchup? Freddy agreed, and stared at his meatloaf instead of at Mr Underwood, who was staring at him as if to say that this would be a great new era in their lives – although Freddy knew enough about Mr Underwood to know that things were never going to change. The meatloaf seemed to stare back at him; its face looked burnt and blistered, and it had mean, black, piggy eyes that were really lumps of the inedible parts of the meat, and it looked at him as though to say that this was as good as things were going to get.

Freddy threw up that night, and Mr Underwood wasn't passed out so he heard him, and he chucked things at the bathroom wall and told Freddy to Shut The Hell Up. When Freddy finally was able to stop his guts from contracting and vomiting the meatloaf, he crawled into bed and fell asleep. He had a bad dream about a cat and its claws, but it wasn't like the little kitten – though it had the same fur pattern – it was bigger, much bigger, and its claws were like knives and it chased him like he was a mouse who was scurrying to his hole. But in the dream, Freddy couldn't find his hole, and he woke up just as the cat's claws were scratching the back of his shirt.

It was around this time that Freddy learned the term 'flesh wound'. It meant that he was hurt, but not badly. It wasn't like being sick, like with the Cancer, or being stabbed through the chest with a knife or anything. It meant that he was only hurt a little bit, like a scratch from the cat or a slap with Mr Underwood's Belt. Though both of those things hurt, and very badly, and made Freddy very scared, they were things that he could get better from. He would be bruised, but the purple would turn to black and then to yellow soon enough, and though it made him wince when he sat down, he knew that the bruises would go away, and if he was good, and he didn't do anything to upset Mr Underwood, he wouldn't have any more for a while. And the scars from the cat would heal. The skin would knit itself back together and maybe it would be red and bumpy and itchy for a while but eventually the blood would stop coming and maybe the scab would go away or turn pink and then it wouldn't hurt any more. Flesh wound. Flesh wounds weren't something to be scared of. Flesh wounds weren't so bad. And Freddy should count himself lucky, he thought, that he only had to deal with the flesh wounds dealt by Mr Underwood and not anything worse, like those claws in his dream, which he knew would go right through him if he stepped too close.

Mr Underwood did get a job, then, and for a while things were all right. Freddy didn't know what he did, but it was something bad, he gathered, because Mr Underwood always complained about it, and at night, when he came home, he often had to have a lot to drink to make the memories of it go away. Freddy understood that; there were a lot of memories he wanted to make go away. They mostly involved Mr Underwood, and his Belt, but Freddy wasn't allowed to have a drink, because drinking was a grown up thing, he understood. He wasn't sure why – children could have just as many bad thoughts as grown ups, and he felt that they should be able to drink to make them go away as well. In fact, Freddy thought he had a worse life than Mr Underwood, because no-one beat Mr Underwood with a Belt, no-one made him take his Medicine – Mr Underwood just said, often, when he was drunk (or, rather, he slurred) that he felt cheated by his family and the System, whatever that was. Freddy didn't think that was so bad. But he didn't go into the fridge and take a drink, though he sometimes wanted to, just to see what it was like. He knew that would make Mr Underwood very angry. Mr Underwood hardly had enough beer as it was, and he got annoyed when it ran out. Freddy didn't want to make him have any less, and bring the rage on quicker – and besides, it would be stealing, because the beer belonged to Mr Underwood, and he wanted it; it wasn't like the dolls on the sides of the road or the pictures in the magazines that were going to be cut up. And it would also be breaking the Rules, because beer was not a thing that children were supposed to touch (though Freddy remembered having a can tipped over him when he was very, very small, but he supposed that must have been in lieu of the Belt, or perhaps just because Mr Underwood thought it was funny, because he could remember him laughing).

Things were all very much the same as Freddy grew up himself. Mr Underwood settled into his job, and drank when he came home, and Freddy continued staying out of his way. As he got older, he moved into a bigger school, where the kids were older, and instead of picking on him, they just ignored him. Most of the bigger kids didn't care about him having no daddy; he wasn't the Son of a Hundred Maniacs here, whatever that meant – he was just Fred Krueger, that red-headed kid in Class 1H.

But most of the kids here in the bigger school didn't play in the sandbox, either, and Freddy had to stop doing that, because he knew if the other kids found out he was different, they _would_ start picking on them, and Freddy – Fred now, Fred was a grown up name – Fred just wanted them to leave him alone. He didn't want to be noticed. He just wanted to blend in, like all the other kids seemed to do so easily. He didn't want to attract any sort of attention to himself, because – although he knew the other kids weren't in charge of him and didn't have a Belt like Mr Underwood and weren't labouring under any delusion that he had to take his Medicine – he heard enough insults at home in the evenings and didn't want them slung his way during school, too.

He made a couple of friends – well, they weren't really what he would call friends; Fred didn't have any friends. But they were nice enough as people, and they were outcast enough to take each other in. Fred doubted that any of them really liked any of the others, but by clinging together in a group, it meant that you were less likely to be picked on. There was strength in numbers – that was what he had learned from a book about wild life. Lions would attack the weakest, slowest member of the herd of zebras, and the others would be able to get away. But a zebra on its own would be a fine target for the lions, no matter how big or how strong. There was a kid in his grade, a loner, who seemed to be the prime target for the taunts of the lion-bullies. He was a kid who sat alone and worked on science projects, and the other kids teased him – but they didn't know anything _about_ him, not really. Fred supposed they didn't know anything about _him_, either – they didn't know he had no mom or dad because he'd never told them, and he certainly wouldn't tell them about Mr Underwood, because if Mr Underwood thought he was badmouthing him, that would mean he'd have to take his medicine again.

Now that he was old enough to remain level-headed and quiet and stay out of Mr Underwood's way, Fred didn't have to take his Medicine very much. He only had to take it at regular intervals, when Mr Underwood came looking for him. That wasn't so bad. But Fred was afraid to leave his herd at school in case the rest of the kids thought his behaviour was weird – though, in truth, he would rather not have talked to any of the people he called friends. He would rather not have talked to anyone. He would have rather taken Mr Underwood's truck and driven away, and not stopped for miles, and never return to Springwood. But he didn't know how to drive – and that would be stealing, and stealing was very wrong.

So Fred spent his time with the kids he called his friends, trying not to seem weird or antisocial or different, and he learned from them many new things. He learned about growing up, and about rebelling. He didn't rebel at home, of course, but when he was with the kids from school, they would hang out on weekends in the basement of one of their houses, and there, Rob, as his name was, would take some of his own father's beer and share it.

"Doesn't your dad get mad at you?" asked Fred, staring at the newly open bottle in his hand. Rob had popped the top off it with a shiny bottle opener shaped like the Eiffel Tower (that was in France, but Fred had never been there; he had only seen pictures of it in books and as far as he was concerned it could have been a fairy tale castle). The liquid in the bottle smelled bad – it smelled like home, and like Mr Underwood – and it fizzed and popped in a way that Fred wasn't used to. He was used to it being flat, and stale, and lying still and sticking to the surfaces of tables.

"Nah, man. He don't care," shrugged Rob, and took a swig of his own bottle before moving to the broken couch they kept in the basement for when they hung out. Fred did likewise: the beer tasted disgusting and he nearly gagged, but the other kids seemed to think it was 'cool' – why, he didn't know; he had seen what happened when people drank too much of it – so he pretended to think it was cool, too, just to fit in. He sat on the couch and pressed the mouth of the bottle to his own lips, keeping them tight shut and trying not to swallow. He did, sometimes, though, and it made his head feel strange – sort of light, and bubbly. It wasn't a bad feeling, but Fred didn't know if it was worth drinking the awful-tasting stuff for. It was funny, though – the more he drank of it, the less he seemed to care about the taste.

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	4. The Razor

**part iv: the razor**

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Fred still wasn't a Grown Up yet, but he was old enough, he reasoned, to drink beer, if all his 'friends' were doing it. He was starting to notice the girls, too – one girl in a grade above him reminded him of Alyssa from elementary school. She had the same blue eyes, and long blonde hair, and everyone told her she was beautiful and she believed them, just like Alyssa did. Fred had to laugh at her inwardly, though. She believed the people and received the compliments in exactly the same way Alyssa had – but when Fred had known Alyssa, she had been six years old, and this girl was at least sixteen. She was Grown Up – or at least more Grown Up than Fred – and she was still acting the same way. Perhaps, thought Fred, there was less difference between kids and grown ups than he had thought. The thought scared him a bit, because he had been planning, when he was grown up, to buy a car and drive away from Springwood with whatever money he could find. Maybe there would be no right time for that, now, he mused.

He usually spent a lot of time thinking about things like that when he was in Rob's basement. Rob would hand the group of them a little cigarette, all wound up in white paper, with brown tendrils of dried up grass sticking out of the end.

"Try it," he said one day, lighting the end and offering to Fred. "My brother gave it to me. It's good."

Fred took it hesitantly. He knew what it was – he had heard the other kids talking about it – and he wanted to try it, but he didn't know if it was as bad as the beer or not. It did taste funny, and it made him choke and cough, but after he had taken a couple of puffs on it the world seemed to be a much better place – or wider, somehow, anyway, and he was much more aware of everything, and he felt like he could put it all together more clearly.

There was not a world outside of Mr Underwood, he had realised. No, how he was treated wasn't right and it wasn't normal, but there were hundreds upon thousands of other kids in just the same situation, and hundreds of thousands of Mr Underwoods out there, no matter where you went in the world. Going away from Springwood wouldn't solve anything. No-one and nothing would solve anything. Fred realised, sitting in a dank basement with kids who were not his friends and who were stoned out of their minds, that he would just have to learn to deal with it, because being drunk and being high was the best feeling he would ever get. He understood why Mr Underwood did what he did, now. Maybe he had been in Fred's situation at one point, and maybe he realised at a point in his life that he was one of the people that things would never get better for. But Fred couldn't give up hope, though, and his anger for Mr Underwood still festered. Why couldn't he have at least _tried_ to make things better? But, oh, that was so wrong of him to thing when Mr Underwood had given him a home, wasn't it?

Fred began to notice himself changing physically. It frightened him a great deal, because Mr Underwood didn't tell him what was happening to him. He'd learned about it in school, though, and picked up snatched of it in conversation with the other kids. _Puberty_. He wasn't entirely sure what it meant, but he adapted to it. He adapted to the stupid, squeaky voice, and the greasy, itchy skin, and the hair, and the _urges_. He held them back, the urges, because they seemed so strange and unnatural and he wondered if there wasn't something very, very wrong with him.

Mr Underwood yelled at him one day – he wasn't particularly drunk, and didn't look to be in the mood for administering Fred's Medicine – but he shouted at him all the same, about the scruffy hair that was growing on his chin. Fred found it odd, if he was honest – he had never had a beard before, and he assumed that it was something only hippies and people's grandfathers had. It was itchy and gingery-brown, and Mr Underwood yelled at him to get into the bathroom and shave it, or people would mistake him for a tramp, and criticise Mr Underwood's parenting. Fred shut himself in the bathroom and locked the door while Mr Underwood continued yelling outside for a while, and then he heard him stomp off to watch the TV. He would be expecting, when Fred came down, to be the same as he always was – a quiet, perfect little kid, not an embarrassment.

Fred didn't know quite why his beard (if it could be called that) was an embarrassment to his foster father. They had never spoken about it before; Mr Underwood had never shared his opinions on beards. Fred hadn't known it was going to grow; he hadn't known what to expect. He didn't realise the growing up meant automatically growing a beard, or underarm hair, or that weird bristly hair between his legs. And Mr Underwood had never told him about shaving before, although now that Fred looked around the bathroom he realised that Mr Underwood must do it fairly regularly. There was a jar of white cream in the cupboard labelled for that purpose, and a cup with a bunch of gleaming, straight razors in it. Fred had always known they were there, but he had never asked what for; he never liked to ask Mr Underwood questions, which usually worked out fine because Mr Underwood hated Fred asking him questions.

Hands trembling slightly with uncertainty about the task he was about to undertake, Fred picked up the jar of cream. It wasn't supposed to be a big deal, this, was it? As far as he knew, now, men, grown up men, were supposed to do this near enough every day. So it couldn't be that hard. He dipped his fingers into the jar and smeared some of the paste over the hair on his chin, and it caught between the strands, making them look bedraggled and filthy. Grimacing, he rubbed it, and it turned into a foam. There. He had seen Mr Underwood wonder out of the bathroom like this on several occasions, and he had always wondered why. Now he knew.

His chin and hands were wet and cold as he picked up one of the razors. It seemed far too long, and far too sharp, and Fred wondered how Mr Underwood had every handled this when he was in the state where his hands were shaking and he couldn't see straight. How had he not sliced his own throat open, or stabbed himself in the eye yet, Fred wondered. He could barely handle it himself, and he dragged it lightly along the top of the foam, barely skinning it. No, that wouldn't do. He'd need to press harder; he wasn't even touching his hair. But his heart was pounding with an irrational fear: how could he slice his hair off without ripping off his own skin? Why hadn't he been taught how to do this properly?

_It won't be too bad_, a voice at the back of his head told him. _Just a flesh wound, Freddy._

Fred swallowed, feeling uncomfortable about the proximity of the razor to his throat, and tried to steel himself. No, he reasoned, it wouldn't be too bad. Just a bit of torn skin. That would be all. No big deal. No need to worry.

Yes, but why did he even need the broken skin, the voice at the back of his head wanted to know. If Mr Underwood had ever done his job _properly_, if he had ever cared about Fred as a _father_ should, then he wouldn't need to worry about getting hurt at all.

_No, Freddy_, he reprimanded himself. _Mr Underwood was very good to take you in, and you should be grateful._ And then he felt incredibly guilty for hating him (no, not hate, just resentment, yes, that was all). Mr Underwood had problems of his own, didn't he? Fred understood what it was like to have problems, and it must be difficult, he thought, to have to raise a kid by yourself. Mr Underwood, he was sure, had done the best he could.

But, still... The razor gleamed at him in the light from the bathroom window, cold and threatening, and Freddy was scared of it; Fred was scared of what Mr Underwood would do to him if he didn't learn how to use it quickly, and Fred was scared of what he might do to himself.

_Just a flesh wound, Freddy-boy._

And maybe it was because he didn't know how to use it properly, or maybe it was anticipating it (or maybe it was because he wanted to, so angry was he), he pressed the blade into his cheek and dragged it along his skin, much too hard. The cream had made his skin slippery, and the razor blade skidded under his nose, nicking him and leaving a long gash across his top lip.

Fred gave a howl of pain and dropped the razor into the sink. The blood – his blood – dripped from the edge of it, into the plughole, marring the already dirty bowl. The blood was bright red, and thick, and Fred suddenly felt dizzy as he watched it drip slowly from the razor blade. Some of it, from his lip, dribbled its way into his mouth. It tasted metallic, and Fred spat it out. The cream stung the cut, and the whole thing made him feel very lightheaded. It was almost funny, somehow, he thought, and without considering the situation, he began to laugh. He didn't know why it was funny, but it was. There was a sort of tingling feeling inside him, and his cut didn't hurt – well, it did, but it hurt less than the good feeling's strength. The cut felt... good.

Fred stared at the razor, and at the mess of blood in the sink, and when he was done laughing he realised he would be in trouble with Mr Underwood for leaving it in that state. He pressed his fingers to his lip – it stung – and they came away covered in concealing red stuff. Wincing, Fred turned on the taps and began to wash his face. Then he washed the razor, and began to use it again – without the cream this time; he didn't want any more cuts on his face. People would laugh. People would talk. Mr Underwood would get angry. He made a haphazard job of cutting his hair off, but it was decent, he reckoned, and his lip had almost stopped bleeding, so he stood up straight and looked at himself in the mirror. Fine.

Then he went to put the cleaned razor back in its cup, but he stopped. He'd need it again – for shaving, and... for finding out if other cuts could feel good. So, slowly, he slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. It wasn't _really_ stealing, he thought – yes, it belonged to Mr Underwood, but he had three or four others, and he didn't need this one in particular, did he? Fred was sure he wouldn't notice if it went missing.

He turned and left the bathroom, his hand cupping the top of his pocket where the tip of the razor blade was sticking out. It felt deliciously cold against the skin of his fingers. He went downstairs and peered into the living room. It was the evening, already getting dark outside, and Mr Underwood was sitting on the couch with the lights off, the TV glowing and lighting up the room. It threw an enormous black shadow up onto the wall, and made the room an eerie blue colour. Fred traced the edge of the blade with his fingers. Mr Underwood was staring at the TV with a glazed expression, corners of his mouth twitching upwards, chuckling now and again, occasionally taking a sip from the beer bottle he was holding. Fred ran his finger across the razor blade; it kissed his skin but didn't break it. Mr Underwood didn't know he was there.

"Mr Underwood," said Fred, as he heard the announcement of a commercial break from the inane television show.

Mr Underwood looked up with some measure of annoyance. "What is it, boy?" His voice was rough; he sounded tired.

"I've shaved."

"Huh? Oh. That's good. Great job. What's that on your face, boy?"

"I cut myself."

Mr Underwood shook his head. "Moron."

"Can I go to my room now, sir?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Mr Underwood turned back to the TV, which was showing a commercial for shoe polish. A man was literally screaming about how fantastic it was. Fred watched it for a moment more, fingers toying with the blade in his pocket, before turning and going upstairs. And he wondered why on earth anyone would think shoe polish important enough to scream about.

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	5. The Pain

**part v: the pain**

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He sat up until late, though he kept nodding off. He heard, eventually, Mr Underwood ascend the stairs, and shuffling footsteps make their way to his bedroom. The razor blade sat on his bedside cabinet, and he hadn't touched it since, though he stared at it. He held his breath when Mr Underwood went to the bathroom – perhaps he would notice it was missing? – but he left again without coming into Fred's room, so Fred had to assume that he hadn't noticed, and that he could keep the razor. Good. Mr Underwood went to bed shortly after, because he had work in the morning, and passing out on the couch the night before he had to go to work was not what a Good and Responsible parent would do.

Fred waited until Mr Underwood's harsh breathing had slowed to a steady, rhythmic drone, and then he scrambled from the foot of his own bed and grabbed hold of the razor. His hands shook as he held it out in front of himself, and he looked at it from all angles. He took in its shape, the surface of it – how it reflected the light from the street lamps outside. It was almost like a mirror; Fred could make out the shapes of his own eyes it in. They were bulging slightly with exhaustion, a paler green than usual, dark bags hanging under them. Fred blinked, and his hand shook, and then his eyes were gone and it was back to shining orange.

He trembled slightly as he pulled back his the sleeve of his left arm with the fingers that weren't holding the razor. He pushed it up past the elbow, and then swallowed, looking at the thing in his hands. It was lethal looking, and Fred realised how deadly it could be. How was it that people kept things like this in their own homes, where anyone could get hold of them?

He had been thinking about the razor for hours. He'd been picturing it gliding over his skin, slicing in, and that frightened him, but not as much as he thought it would. It excited him, too, somehow, because he knew it was the worst kind of pain. It was hot and sharp and worse than anything Mr Underwood could give to him, and maybe, if he tried hard enough, he could learn to love it. And then maybe taking his Medicine wouldn't be so hard.

So he pressed the blade to the skin of his arm, just below his elbow, and let it rest there for a moment. Was he sure he wanted to do this? Yes, he decided. He was. Even if he didn't like it, he deserved the pain, didn't he? He wasn't the Good Boy he was supposed to be; he had let Mr Underwood down a thousand times and would doubtless do so many more times, and even if Mr Underwood didn't know what was right and what was wrong all the time, Freddy had Bad Thoughts, and those needed to come to an end. So he pressed the blade down, hard, and pulled it across his arm.

There was a horrible, cold, slicing sound, and for a moment Fred felt nothing. And then the pain came, hot and searing, bubbling up under his skin along with the blood. It was white hot, but the blood was red, and even in the darkness, Fred could see that much. He gasped, and sank back onto his knees on the bed. The blood dribbled across his arm; it was warm and felt too thick. He'd been expecting it to run faster, but it just trickled across the unbroken skin and down his arm, across his palm. His hand was held out in front of him, open, palm facing upwards. He tried desperately not to clench it, to bare the pain, and he had to hold his breath to keep from screaming. The knuckles of his right hand turned white as he gripped the razor, trying not to let if fall to the bed. If it stained, there would be hell to pay...

There was a slight tingling sensation, which lessened the pain of the cut. It made Fred feel better about the whole thing. Perhaps the pain wasn't so bad, after all. His head cleared then, and he felt less delirious. This cut didn't feel as good as the last one had, but it didn't feel as bad as the times his thighs and back had been smacked with the buckle on the Belt. It felt only vaguely pleasant, and a little stingy.

Fred blinked furiously; he hadn't realised, but his eyes were watering. He wished they'd stop. If anyone came in, they would think he was crying. And Fred did not cry. He hadn't, properly, for years. Crying was one of the things Mr Underwood hated, and Fred learned that it was a sign of weakness. Only babies and girls cried. He blinked back what could have been tears and then gasped for breath again, allowing his fist to close and pulling his arm closer to him. He set the razor – carefully, carefully – back on the bedside cabinet, and cradled his arm close to him, but tried not to stain his shirt. It was all right, the pain was fading, and in a while, the scar would be gone, too. The cut wasn't particularly deep – there wasn't even that much blood – but Fred felt as though something inside him had changed. He knew he could deal with this sort of thing now, and that made him almost happy.

He wasn't sure he was allowed to be happy about it, though. If Mr Underwood knew what he was doing – if Mr Underwood knew he was trying to get around having to take his Medicine...

But Mr Underwood needn't know. Fred could pretend that the Belt scared him as much as it always had. Fred was good at pretending. He did it a lot. He pretended that he didn't resent Mr Underwood, and he pretended that he liked the kids at school, after all. Both of those things were wrong to do, he knew, but then again, so would be pretending he was really taking his Medicine. And Fred wasn't sure about what was wrong and what was right any more, in any case. Pain wasn't supposed to feel good, or give you a tingly feeling, or even not hurt – and yet that was exactly what it was doing, and it confused him. Did that mean there was something wrong with him? Or was he simply growing up and understanding the world in ways that he hadn't before?

He made his way – quietly – to the bathroom, and grabbed some toilet paper to soak up the blood. It was sticky and brown now, and had almost dried, so he had to splash some water over it, which made it run into the sink almost like a waterfall. Fred watched, mesmerised, until the water turned clear. Then he gathered the toilet paper, dried himself, cleaned the razor blade, and flushed the evidence down the toilet.

In the morning, there was barely a scab. It was a thin, bumpy, reddish-brown line just below the crook of his elbow that he was doubtful anyone but him would ever see. It looked barely more than a nick, though it stood out against the paleness of his skin, but it was covered as he dressed himself by the sleeve of his shirt. Mr Underwood would never see it, and none of his friends would ever see it, but Fred could see it, and he could feel it burning underneath his sleeve. He knew he was imagining that, that it wasn't really burning, but he could feel it, itching and writhing away, drawing attention to itself. To Fred, it was like a badge of honour, representing his struggle with the pain and the fear of the Belt. It was a symbol that he was well on his way to overcoming that fear, and to him it meant a great deal, though one would hardly be able to tell by looking at it.

At school, he mentioned nothing of this achievement to his friends, and at home, he acted as normal, and tried not to talk to Mr Underwood if he could help it at all. It wasn't difficult, because Mr Underwood continued ignoring him, as usual, and didn't seem to notice or care that Fred was slowly changing. He was growing up, and he was learning that pain did not mean the end of the world.

He tried, after a while, to see how cuts felt in different places. His arm was the easiest, because he could reach it and it was usually covered by his sleeves. But he wanted to see how the razor felt elsewhere, too. He tried it on his legs, on his thighs where no-one ever saw. That hurt a lot more, and there were nights when he would sit up till all hours in the bathroom with the light off while Mr Underwood snored heavily in the next room, his leg jigging up and down and his breath coming in sharp hisses, blood dripping to the floor. The sounds of the night outside: crickets, owls hooting, the occasional car passing in the street for some inconceivable reason, kept him company, and they became a sort of soundtrack to his self injury sessions. And Fred became very good at hiding the evidence. Mr Underwood did not suspect a thing; he didn't notice that Fred was tired in the mornings. He didn't realise he had spent most of the night wise awake with the adrenaline from the pain, on his hands and knees on the bathroom floor, scrubbing blood from the base of the toilet. And if he had known, thought Fred bitterly most nights, he probably would have encouraged him. Fred deserved it, Mr Underwood would probably have said.

That made him angry. It felt like almost irrational anger – he did deserve it, didn't he? – but Fred knew that it wasn't. He could sense, in a hazy sort of way, time passing, the same as it always had done, but punctuated now by his almost nightly cutting of himself. The pain gave him a clear head, and he was able to think better, and he was able to realise, as time passed, that he was growing up properly – and soon, he would have to take on his own responsibilities, not stupid things like making coffee for Mr Underwood or taking out the trash, but big things, like starting a family, and he knew that when he did, he wouldn't allow himself to shirk away from them like Mr Underwood. Yes, that was what Mr Underwood was doing, he was shirking; he was trying to avoid having to look after Fred or associate with him. Why, Fred didn't know. Maybe he thought he'd be no good at it if he actually did put in the effort, or maybe he just didn't know how. But Fred didn't care about how Mr Underwood felt, or how difficult it was for him to get up in the mornings, because it was his, Fred's, life that Mr Underwood had messed up. And that just wasn't fair. If anyone deserved to be cut open with a razor blade it was Mr Underwood, not Fred.

But Mr Underwood didn't seem to realise that, and he kept using the Belt on Fred, except it didn't hurt as much any more. Fred was pleased with that – it meant his razor experiment was working. He began using the razor more, and over time, even the pain from that grew less. No-one realised, of course, because Fred was hiding the scars, and Fred was very good at hiding things. But he found he didn't _care_ so much about hiding them any more – it was just the fact that he happened to do it in easy to hide places. He didn't care whether or not his friends were worried about him – though they weren't – and he didn't care if Mr Underwood saw. In fact, he half hoped Mr Underwood would see, and then he'd be able to laugh in the old man's face about his pathetic black belt and its stupid little buckle.

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So, erm, yeah... Reviews would be nice. :)


	6. Medicine

**part vi: medicine**

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The pain from the cuts began to get less and less, perhaps because Fred was used to it or perhaps because he willed it so. Either way, he wasn't getting the same thrill, and it was harder to believe that he deserved it. He just didn't care about it. He sat in the basement in the afternoons now, slicing the skin on his stomach open. It bled less than his leg and his wrists, and it didn't stain the floor. It just stained his sweater, and Fred found himself feeling a bit resentful that Mr Underwood didn't notice. Didn't he realise how strong Fred was now? Didn't he realise how useless his belt was? Fred almost felt sorry for the old man, but he didn't let that thought hang around for very long. The man had ruined his childhood (if he'd ever had a chance of having one, what with his parentage) and Fred hated him for it.

One day, when Mr Underwood came home from work in the evening, Fred heard him shuffle in the front door and yell his name.

"Freddy!"

A slapping sound. He was picking up the belt. Fred's lips twitched into a grin – _stupid_ – and he pulled the razor blade across his stomach again. The blood oozed out slowly, but not enough to start dribbling over his skin: just enough to sit there, and glisten, and remind Fred of how flesh wounds were utterly meaningless. Fred took a shuddering breath, and laughed. It was a _good_ feeling, no feeling at all.

"Freddy!" There he was again. Fred heard his footsteps start down the stairs to the basement, and he froze for a moment. He hadn't meant for Mr Underwood to find him – had he? He'd been going to go up there, in a minute, before Mr Underwood had realised he wasn't in the kitchen and making him dinner. "Freddy!" He was louder now, angry, drunk, and so very, very close. "You ready for it, boy?"

Fred turned. There he was, bottle in one hand and belt in the other, and he had realised that Fred wasn't making him dinner, and he wasn't happy about it. Fred wasn't happy about it either – why should he have to do those things for him? Mr Underwood had never done anything for _him_, except—

"You been a waste since the day I took you in," growled Mr Underwood. "Now it's time to take your medicine."

Fred said nothing, but stared him down, steeled himself, the cold steel of the razor still clutched in one hand – and he barely even flinched as Mr Underwood raised the belt and brought it down to smack him across his torso, over and over again.

It didn't hurt.

It didn't hurt, and Fred began to laugh. It felt _wonderful_, no feeling at all, and he was struck in that moment by an overwhelming sense of freedom. Mr Underwood didn't get to dictate to him what he did with his life, no-one did – Fred could go anywhere, do anything, be anything he wanted. He didn't need to stand and take this assault from a pathetic old man who was taking his rage out on him because he had nothing worthwhile in his own life.

Fred kept laughing, and he could see the confusion in Mr Underwood's eyes. The Medicine usually worked. Fred couldn't help but grin.

"Thank you, sir," he said, as the leather slapped his neck – he couldn't help it; he felt almost elated with the lack of effect from each hit of the belt. "May I have another?"

Mr Underwood didn't understand, Fred could see that in his face, and he was angry, so very, very angry. With a roar, he hit Fred harder – harder than he had in years, harder than he had since Fred was a little boy – and Fred laughed harder. The belt didn't hurt him any more, and, oh, that was blissful.

"You want to know the secret of pain?" he snarled, grabbing hold of Mr Underwood's wrist. He didn't know if it was the old man's shock at being spoken back to, or his own adrenaline that was giving him the strength to hold off another slap, but he knew that Mr Underwood couldn't use the threat of the belt's pain against him any more. He couldn't take out his own pain, whatever it was, on Fred. "If you just – stop – feeling it," said Fred, and he saw for a moment something akin to a spark of understanding and despair in Mr Underwood's eyes, "you can start using it."

Mr Underwood looked terrified, and Fred had never seen that look on his face before. He had seen sadness and loneliness and all the other things Mr Underwood had and repressed, but he hadn't seen fear, because Mr Underwood thought he had seen everything, and he thought he knew what the worst thing in the world was. Fred wondered, just for a moment, how his foster father's life might have turned out if he hadn't taken the path he did, and how his own life might have turned out if it weren't for Mr Underwood – but he didn't have much time to dwell on that, because he could feel something inside him rising up, and he knew he wouldn't be able to stop it.

It was his hand that moved before he realised what he was doing. His hand, which had been hanging limply by his side, fingers just barely holding onto the razor. He hadn't planned to do it, he hadn't ever meant to, but that was just how life went, wasn't it? He had started on a path and now he couldn't turn back. The razor wasn't any good to him any more, after all – he wasn't the one who _deserved_ to have to take his medicine. He lifted the blade, and with a hiss of breath he pointed it right at Mr Underwood's face. The old man's eyes widened in terror, and Fred's hiss turned almost to a laugh as he thrust the razor forward – and Mr Underwood screamed.

The razor sliced its way through the old man's eye, and Fred dragged it downwards, tearing the bottom lid and the skin with it. Mr Underwood stumbled backwards and whacked Fred uselessly with his belt and his bottle, but Fred didn't feel it. Blood rushed from Mr Underwood's face, along with disgusting watery pus, and Fred barely heard the screaming as he pulled the razor back and turned it sideways, flicking his wrist, hard, so that the blade caught the old man's throat. A strangled scream turned to gurgling, as Fred plunged the razor blade at the exposed neck again and again and again, and there was so much _blood_. And then Mr Underwood fell to his knees, and he looked up at Fred with his one good eye, and his opened his lips uselessly. Fred didn't know if he was trying to talk, or if it was just the old man's body trying to comprehend what had just happened to it. Mr Underwood's hands were at his throat, but there was nothing they could do. Blood was spurting with velocity from a nicked vein, and Mr Underwood's one good eye rolled back into his head, and then opened again to stare blankly at Fred. Blood covered his face, and filled his mouth, dripping down his chin and his chest and staining his clothes. He made a confused sort of gurgling sound, and looked at Fred as though he didn't understand.

"I'm sorry, sir," said Fred, as his foster father collapsed against the wall. "You just needed a taste of your own medicine, that was all."

Mr Underwood's body gave a jerk, and he shuddered, and his arms flopped to his side, making a sloppy sort of sound as they hit a shallow pool of the man's own blood. Fred smiled, and stared at the body for a moment. His head was buzzing. This was better than being drunk; this was fantastic. He should have done this years ago. He was free now.

But then he realised he had nowhere else to go. All he had ever known was this house. How would he be able to leave Springwood, especially if they knew he had killed his 'father'? Well, they needn't know. He would hide the evidence; he was good at hiding things – yes, he would say that he'd been upstairs when he heard Mr Underwood come home from work and there had been a killer in the basement and Mr Underwood had taken the belt down there to teach whoever it was a lesson, yes, and then they had escaped through the little window...

Without thinking, Fred crossed the basement and pushed the window open roughly, and knocked over a shelf. Now it would look like there had been a struggle, like someone had escaped. Fred would call the police, and say he'd found the body, and they would come and they would put Fred into care and maybe he'd have a nicer family this time. And what of the razor? Fred considered it for a second and then rushed to get a dust rag from the fallen shelf. He folded the blade into it, and then stuffed it in his pocket. The blood would begin to seep through but it wouldn't stain his jeans for a while and he could hide it; he was good at hiding things. They needn't ever know it was him. They needn't ever find the razor. They needn't even know Fred had used a razor, on himself or on anyone else. They needn't ever see the cuts that littered his arms and his legs and his stomach, or the marks from the buckle of the belt that would never fade. If they did, they might think that this was revenge. And this was not revenge. This was just a thing that he had to do.

But, oh, it was so very wrong. Fred turned and stared again at the body, and realised that for the first time in his life things were going to properly change. He didn't know what life would be like without Mr Underwood giving him his Medicine every few days, and he knew that he didn't want to self medicate with the razor any more, because he didn't feel it. Maybe he would have to pass it on to someone else. He shook his head. That was a horrible thing to think; that was very Wrong indeed. He hated it when Mr Underwood gave him his Medicine, didn't he? And yet... what he had just done was very Wrong, and he couldn't imagine doing anything much worse. Whatever he did now, there would be no consequences.

And yet... he suddenly felt very small and alone, and he realised he was thinking again as though he were the child that Mr Underwood had tormented. He didn't feel like a killer, he just felt like a naughty little boy who had done something that would earn him a punishment later, except he knew that that punishment would never come. And he could not wrap his head around that fact. Punishment _always_ came – except now, who could punish him? And how? He had no-one he cared for left (because he had cared for Mr Underwood; it was his duty to do so) and he couldn't imagine how he could be hurt any more. It frightened him, that, instead of feeling good, and he didn't feel like a grown up any more, like he'd thought he would. Instead, he felt like little Freddy again, cowering in a corner.

He went up to his room and sobbed, because there was no-one to tell him that crying was stupid. And he felt a bit better after that, and he stood up and wiped his eyes and decided to get on with things – because losing Mr Underwood didn't hurt, it was just a bit disconcerting, that was all. And then he phoned the cops, to tell them of the break-in and his discovery of his foster father's body.

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Please review! :D


	7. Mr Krueger

**part vii: mr krueger**

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What happened over the next few weeks hardly seemed to matter. The cops came and took Mr Underwood's body away, and they said they were going to look into who it was that was responsible. They asked Freddy if he knew anything about the break in, or if he had seen anything suspicious. Freddy said no. And then they asked him if he had anything to do with it. Again, Freddy denied it. He pretended to cry a little, because even though he had cried all the tears he could for Mr Underwood in the moments immediately following his death (and they weren't even for Mr Underwood, they were for himself), he still knew that crying meant weakness, and if the cops thought he was weak, they wouldn't think he had killed the man.

And it seemed to work. They stopped asking him questions, and they left him alone. They couldn't find anything that linked Freddy to the death, other than the fact he had been in the house at the time. But he claimed to have had headphones on – he was listening to his new record at the time, and he didn't hear anything until the shelf was knocked over. But by then it was too late, and whoever it was had gone. Some of the cops looked suspiciously at Freddy, especially since they told him that someone on the street had informed them that Freddy didn't have the best relationship with his foster father. Freddy suspected it was that bitch who wouldn't let her son play with him when he was a kid. But there was nothing they could find to convict him, so they just had to let the case drop. Freddy was good at hiding things.

Freddy was placed almost immediately in the care of an elderly woman. Her name was Mrs Bennett, but she insisted on Freddy calling her Jean. Her husband had passed away long ago, she said, and she liked to have children in the house. It stopped her feeling lonely, she said, and made her feel like she was doing a good thing. She had never had any of her own, on account of the fact that her husband had passed away so young – a car accident, she said.

She was almost blind, and always wore a dark pink cardigan, and she had pictures in every available surface of the house. Mostly they were of children and young teenagers that she had reared, and a man that she told Freddy time and time again was her husband.

"My lovely Ronald," she said fondly, picking up the picture frame and stroking it gently. "A fine young man when we were engaged... Wasn't much long before he passed away after we got married. You be careful, Wilfred, you make sure you take good care of your wife when you find her."

"Yes, ma'am, of course I will," said Freddy quietly, and wondered if his razor would better help her understand that he was Frederick, not Wilfred.

He stared hard at her back as she walked away into the kitchen, and then decided not to touch the razor again, because he wasn't sure how he would feel if he hurt an old lady. That would be wrong, and there wouldn't be an excuse for it like there was for killing Mr Underwood, who had hurt him time and time again. 'Jean' was all right, really, and although Freddy didn't want to listen to her patter on all the time he didn't feel anything for her, hatred or otherwise, so it was easier to pretend she wasn't there. And Jean didn't mind when Freddy ignored her – Freddy assumed she assumed it was the stress of Mr Underwood's death that was making him withdraw into himself.

He dropped out of school. He didn't see the point of it any more. He knew everything he needed to know, didn't he? He knew that an education meant nothing when you weren't going to end up doing anything with it. Maybe if his grades had been good enough to go to college he would have pursued it; college folks got to travel the world and find endless new places, places where people like Mr Underwood didn't exist, and places where people like Freddy didn't have to suffer and kill. But he wasn't one of the college folks – he knew he was clever, but he had never tried hard enough at school to do well. He had been too busy trying to fit in, drinking and getting high, and trying to think new ways to make his razor hurt less. A 'waster', his ninth grade teacher had called him, and Freddy thought he was probably right.

"My Ronald's brother is retiring from his post," said Jean, when Freddy explained to her his plans for the future. That is, he had no idea what he was going to do with his future, but he knew he was going to do something, anything; he was going to move away from Springwood and from Elm Street and never look back. "He's a janitor at the high school. I could put in a good word for you, son, get you a job there."

"Don't bother," said Freddy, but she did. She asked the old man to train him up and before he knew it, he was back at his old high school, mopping the corridors and cleaning the windows, mowing the lawn and scrubbing the floors of the changing rooms. The other kids, the ones that remembered him, laughed when they saw him on his hands and knees in overalls, shining the tiles on the floor. The ones who had been his friends just tried to ignore him, for they had drifted apart, really, long ago. But most of the students there didn't remember him at all, and it meant nothing to them that there was a new janitor mopping up their messes when they'd left the school behind for the night. He scowled at the sea of backs as the students fled the doors once the three thirty bell had rung, and swabbed the floor with resentment. Within months, all the people he had known had graduated, and he was absent from the ceremony, and they grew older, and they moved away from Springwood and from Elm Street and maybe they went to college and they didn't look back. Freddy hated them, with every fibre of his body.

It wasn't long before Jean passed away, too. She died in her sleep, they said, and Freddy knew the cops thought he might have been responsible, but he wasn't – he had moved out of the house by that time, and by some strange quirk of fate, he had the right to move back into his childhood home, 1428 Elm Street. He had thought that going back there would mean that he would feel very small again, and remember everything that had happened. But it didn't. The house had been cleared of most of Mr Underwood's possessions – 'evidence', the cops said, but Freddy knew that they were just taking them for themselves. It was nice to be alone in the house, not to have to deal with being yelled at or beaten or talked at. Freddy didn't attend Jean's funeral. He just didn't care enough.

Years went by and although he was earning money, he had just enough to take care of himself. He didn't have enough to move away from Springwood. So he resigned himself to his old house, and his janitorial duties, and he swabbed the floor and kept everything clean – yes, Mr Underwood, no, Mr Underwood, right away, Mr Underwood, _sir_. Sometimes, Freddy thought he could hear the old man stomping about upstairs, and it frightened him.

As time passed, little Freddy Krueger, the Bastard Son of a Hundred Maniacs, grew into Mr Krueger, That Creepy Janitor. He heard the kids whispering about him in the halls. They had seen him, he realised, digging up weeds on the day of the girls' volleyball tournament, just at the start of summer. The flower beds were right by the pitch, and Freddy couldn't _help_ that. He couldn't help that he had to clear out the soil when the girls just happened to be running around in those short skirts and white, unbuttoned polo shirts in the sun. He wasn't doing anything wrong, and he resented the implication. Why was it that people always thought he was in the wrong? He couldn't _help_ looking, and he couldn't help how he felt about it. Those sorts of urges weren't the kind of things he could control, and it wasn't as though he gave into them in front of the students.

He waited until they had gone home. And he waited until he was left almost alone in the school, with only the principal and a couple of the teachers in their rooms down the hall, and he waited until he was alone and had permission to clean the changing rooms. Sometimes the girls forgot things, and they left them behind – occasionally a pair of old sneakers that they just wanted someone else to throw out, or a half used tube of lipstick. But sometimes, maybe on the floor near the showers or hanging discarded over the corner of an old gym bag, he'd find a pair of lacy panties – the sort they weren't allowed to wear to school – and what was he to do with them but bring them home with him? Who would care? It wasn't _stealing_, after all – they were forgotten and left behind, lost, and he was just going to throw them out otherwise. And they were so soft, and so pretty. Just like their owners. Freddy hadn't been with a girl in a long time – not since the early years of high school, when he was a student – but he could stroke their panties and he could _pretend_. That wasn't wrong. He had never been taught that that was wrong; he wasn't hurting anyone.

Most of the real girls tended to avoid him. They seemed to think they knew what went on in his head, but he knew they had no idea. They thought he was a simpleton, a freak, and he didn't speak a word to them because of it. They were no different than the kids who had picked on him in elementary school – infantile, stupid, and wrapped up in their own shallow issues. The grown ups were just as bad, though – Freddy didn't speak to them, either. Most of the teachers looked down their noses at him, and felt it was their divine right to instruct him on how to clean their class rooms. Yes, Mr Underwood, no, Mr Underwood, right away, Mr Underwood, _sir_.

One of them, Mrs Hayes, Freddy had heard in one of the disused classrooms when he was making his way to the janitorial closet to get bleach for the toilets. He stopped and peered in the tiny window. She had her back to him and didn't see him, but Freddy saw her all right, and was that—? It was – the vice-principal. Now, Freddy knew _that_ was wrong, because Mrs Hayes was a Mrs, after all, and she shouldn't be lurking around dark classrooms after everyone else had gone home, all but screaming her pleasure at being with another man. Freddy watched for a bit, and then he went to get the bleach, and when he went to clean Mrs Hayes' classroom, he saw her bag sitting on the desk – _And what do you know?_ he thought; there was a spare pair of panties folded neatly inside of it. That _was_ stealing, all right, but, Freddy reasoned as he pocketed them, one bad turn deserves another.

They were soft, but they didn't have the same feeling about them as the young girls' did. _They_ felt somehow innocent and sweet, even though Freddy knew, because he heard the gossip the kids didn't think the janitor was listening to, that most of the girls were anything but. Thinking about the slutty, middle aged bitch didn't give him the same sort of thrill.

Most of the kids in the school ignored him when they weren't whispering about him, and Freddy thought that was all right, because he liked to just watch them. He didn't talk to them unless he had to, like when they asked him a question about when he was locking up the school or he had to direct them to something in the lost and found. But one girl, he noticed, seemed to be losing and finding rather a lot of things.

Her name was Loretta, and Freddy knew her type. She was plain, and slightly plump, with brown hair and uneven bangs. She didn't wear any make up, and she wasn't on the volleyball team, but she had a soft voice and an air of innocence about her, and she seemed to want to hang around after school was done just to talk with Freddy. She wasn't one of the popular kids; she didn't have many friends to talk to and apparently hadn't heard the rumours about him. Or maybe she just wanted to do something a little risqué. Either way, Freddy found her company to be rather undesirable at first. She wasn't the sort of girl who wore lace panties; she was the sort who wore plain, sensible, white cotton underpants, and never went out with any boys. But she seemed to think that Freddy was funny, somehow, though he didn't know why. She told him he had a way with words, and over the weeks the amount of time they spent together after the school had closed grew longer and longer. Freddy began to resent her company slightly less; she even made him laugh, sometimes, mostly with her ignorance and stupid jokes. Freddy knew it was generally considered unpleasant to laugh _at_ someone, but in truth it wasn't malicious. He thought Loretta was all right, actually, if a bit dense.

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I realise this might have seemed a bit skimmed over, but I felt like it was just a transnational period in my telling of Freddy's story. What happened during this time, in my head, wasn't particularly relevant to the story I'm trying to tell, though I needed to include parts of it. Thank you for putting up with me!

Please review! (:


	8. Loretta

**part viii: loretta**

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One day, they went for a walk along the street after Freddy had closed the school up for the evening. It was nearing summer; the kids were in the midst of their exams, and the nights were long and warm. Loretta was wearing a loose, flowing white dress, and had her hair pulled back in a bun. It was the messy kind that looked was supposed to look artistic and unconventional, careless when in actuality it took a good twenty minutes. Freddy wondered vaguely if she was making the effort to look nice for him. He didn't know why she'd do that. He hadn't bothered to look nice for her; he didn't see the point in dressing up unless there was a purpose to it. And what was the purpose in trying to impress a high school girl?

They walked to the park, Freddy listening to her chatter aimlessly. He didn't mind being talked at by Loretta. She was more interesting that the old woman who'd taken him in had been, at any rate, and she liked him for some reason. He didn't find himself particularly attracted to her but he supposed he could make do.

"Did you watch the football team's last match, Mr Krueger?"

"Hm?" he said. They had made their way along a path surrounded by bushes, and there was a set of stone steps leading up a hill. The edge of it was baked in the fading heat; the sun was just beginning to creep over the edge of the horizon and the shadows were growing long. Freddy stood on the steps and hopped onto flat stone surface, and then he helped Loretta do the same. She grinned at him, giggled nervously, and her face flushed.

"The team's last football game, Mr Krueger. Did you see them play? It was last Wednesday."

"Oh," said Freddy, "no, I was working inside that day. And you don't have to call me Mr Krueger."

Loretta giggled again, and her face turned an even deeper shade of red. Freddy hadn't known that that was possible, and he felt embarrassed for her. "What can I call you, then?"

"Freddy," said Freddy, and he gave her a little smile. He hoped it was calming her nerves, he didn't know what to do with people when they were in a state. Loretta looked away, biting her lip, and then turned to face him again. Her cheeks were still red, but she seemed to be holding back her giggles.

"My dad doesn't like pet names," she said.

"Pet names?" Freddy furrowed his brow.

"Yes. Diminutive forms. He things they're vulgar. My mom used to call me Lori, but she stopped. Dad didn't like it. His name's Michael, never Mickey, or Mike. Always Michael. So I can't call you Freddy. It's just not... something I'm used to." She laughed then, a nervous laugh, but a proper one, more than a giggle, and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

"Fred, then," said Freddy, and he felt himself smile in spite of the stupidity of that statement.

"Isn't Fred short for something? Like—"

"No," said Freddy, "it's not."

"Fred, then," Loretta repeated, and she smiled at him warmly. "Didn't you catch the game, then?"

"Nah," said Freddy, and looked down at his hands. "I don't keep an eye on the football."

"Oh," said Loretta. "Me neither."

"You didn't watch it?" Freddy looked at her.

"Oh, yeah, I did, but only because everyone else was. I don't understand the game, really. Or soccer. I don't think any of my friends do either – except for Jessica, she's a total jock – they just watch it because they think the players are cute."

Freddy gave a bark of laughter. "I don't understand the game, but I don't think the players are cute, either. So I guess you know why I wasn't watching."

Loretta giggled guiltily. "I don't think that about the players, either," she said. "I mean, it's weird, I guess... All my friends are drooling over the quarterback and here I am with a crush on the janitor. Um, I mean—" Freddy tilted his head. "Not that there's anything wrong with being a janitor, you know, I just meant that—"

"You have a crush on me?" asked Freddy.

"Um," said Loretta. "Maybe?" Freddy laughed. "Okay, yeah." She turned away. "I'm sorry."

"Hey." Freddy reached out a hand and took hold of one of hers, which were resting on the stone wall beside her. "I kinda figured."

She turned to look at him. He could feel her hand sweating, and he shifted slightly closer. She watched him, and then raised her eyes to look into his. "You did?"

"Well..." said Freddy. "It was kind of obvious."

"Oh, my God." Loretta raised her eyes skyward, and pulled her hand away from Freddy, and buried her face in them. "I'm so sorry, this is really awful."

"Hey, no, come on, now," said Freddy and he took hold of both her hands this time, and gently prised them away from her face. She looked at him apprehensively. "It's not."

"How is it not?" she said. "Oh, God, this is so embarrassing, I don't even—"

"Shut up," said Freddy, and he leant in to kiss her.

His lips brushed hers – they were warm and soft but they tasted of the school lunches. Freddy didn't really care though. A kiss was a kiss was a kiss and what it led to would be good no matter what they tasted like. He pressed his mouth to her harder, and she did the same, but then she pulled away, and pulled her hands away, too.

"Mr Krueger, I don't know—"

"Fred," said Freddy, and leaned in again, but Loretta drew away.

"Fred, is this wrong?" she asked. "I mean, you work at my school..."

"So?"

"Isn't it against the rules?"

"To Hell with the rules," said Freddy, and shrugged. Loretta giggled nervously again – _God_, he wished she would stop doing that.

"But what if my father finds out? He would be so mad."

"Hmm," said Freddy. "But you won't tell, will you?"

And he leant in to kiss her again and this time she didn't pull away. He didn't think she'd ever kissed anyone before, and if she had, it hadn't been for a long time, since she was a little girl in the playground, playing some sort of kiddies' game. But she wasn't too bad, and he pulled her closer to him, lips locked around hers, tongue flicking against her slightly open mouth. He sucked on her upper lip, biting it gently, and kissed her harder, and for a long time, before she pushed him away.

"It's getting dark," she said, sounding breathless.

And so it was. The shadows were much longer now, and the sun was spilling its light like paint into the clouds, orange tinged with pink, as though the sky was on fire.

"Oh," said Freddy. "We better get you home, then. Your dad will probably worry."

"I told him I was going to help Madison with her homework," said Loretta, as though she was being terribly rebellious. "I didn't tell him when I'd be back."

"Why don't you come back to my place, then?" said Freddy. "We can... hang out."

"I don't think my dad would be too pleased about that," said Loretta.

"Then don't tell," said Freddy.

Loretta laughed. "You're funny. But I should go before it gets dark."

She hopped, in an ungainly manner, from the wall, and then she said goodbye to Freddy. She looked for a moment as though she was going to kiss him on the cheek – and Freddy so hoped she wouldn't – and then she turned and walked down the path, almost skipping, and Freddy watched her go. Her dress hung loosely around her legs, but it clung to the top of her hips, which were wider, curved, and Freddy couldn't take his eyes off them. He thought about Loretta that night before he went to sleep, and wished she would do more than kiss him.

Furtive little meeting began to become a common occurrence between the two of them. Loretta would find and excuse to be late for class, or stay after school, or skip gym to rendezvous with Freddy behind the bike shed, and that cemented his theory that people were generally infantile. He remembered kissing girls behind the bike shed when he had been in second grade – Lisa Hamilton, if he did recall correctly, had been his first kiss, though he had really wanted it to be Alyssa, with her blonde hair and big blue eyes.

He hadn't realised it at the time, but he had, insofar as he could as a child, loved Alyssa. When she teased him, it hurt him, and he hated her for that. As a child, he didn't understand how he could feel so much at once, so he had settled on believing it was just a very strong hatred, but now he realised he had loved and hated her all together. When they got older, he had understood that. They hadn't been in the same class at high school, and they barely spoke to one another – barely looked at one another, unless they got in each other's way in the hallways. Well, that wasn't strictly true. Alyssa didn't speak to him (and Freddy didn't speak to her); Freddy doubted she remembered his name or even recognised him. He didn't have any particularly distinct features, after all. Red hair wasn't the most common, but it was forgettable in a high school with a thousand or more students, were a sea of heads of all colours bobbed up and down the corridors about ten times a day.

Alyssa didn't look at him, but Freddy looked at her. He had studied her as she sat across the lunch hall from him, watched her cut her food daintily, watched her chew tiny mouthfuls. He watched her flick her hair (now worn loose) over her shoulders as she had done in elementary school. He got the same bus as her, so he liked to watch her as she sat in front of him, looking out of the window. He watched her go between classes and he watched her flirt with boys. And she lived just a few streets over from him, and at night, he liked to watch her get changed.

Was it wrong? Maybe. He was still a teenager back then, still growing up, and he hadn't known how it was supposed to feel to do that or what he was supposed to do with the urges that accompanied it. The urges felt strange, and bizarre – they were similar to the fluttery, excited feeling he got in elementary school when he was kissing the girls, and when he thought of Alyssa and her bright blue eyes. Except this feeling was lower down, and he didn't know if it was normal.

It was her fault for not closing the curtains, he reasoned, for leaving them open in the darkness when her light was on and anyone passing through the back of the houses could see. Not many people passed by the back of the houses, but still, Freddy was there, and he could see her. He could see perfectly the outline of her body as the light silhouetted it under her lacy nightdress, the curve of her breasts as she bent to pick something of the floor, and he could see right up her nightie as she lay on her stomach on the bed, legs swinging absent-mindedly in the air as she flicked the pages of a magazine. Yes, it was all her fault that he felt this way, and he resented that. And it was strange, the first time he had cracked and given into what his body was telling him to do, and it confused him, and he wondered if it was normal, because Mr Underwood had never spoken with him about it and he didn't know if was something he was supposed to do. It felt wrong, but, _oh_, it felt _good_.

When he got older, of course, he learned that it was completely normal, and all the other boys he was friends with joked about it. Freddy joked with them, but, still, every time he did it, he was accompanied by a sense of guilt over watching Alyssa when he knew he shouldn't have been – God, he hated her – and over time, the two feelings began to merge into one. Giving himself pleasure made him feel bad, but doing bad things became pleasurable. Perhaps that was why he liked the company of Loretta so much.

He knew he shouldn't be doing it, because he worked at her school and this was the kind of thing they had court cases for, wasn't it? And he knew her father, and probably most people, would disapprove. There wasn't much of an age gap, though – it was only a few years, and what were a few years, after all, in the great scheme of things? Loretta wasn't terribly pretty, or well dressed, or confident, but she did want to be with Freddy, and it was so wonderfully easy for him to encourage her.

They walked together after school as well, long walks into the evening, and Freddy supposed her father must have been hearing a lot about how Loretta was helping her friend Madison study for her exams. They talked about all manner of things, and they kissed passionately, and when it began to get dark, Freddy would always ask her to come home with him. She would always laugh, tell him he amused her, and flounce away, and he would always watch her, wondering when she would realise he was not kidding, and that his well of interest would soon run dry. He didn't even think about her at night any more; he hadn't since the first couple of times. He thought about her friends, instead. One of them looked like Alyssa. There were always girls that looked like Alyssa.

One night, near the end of the year, when most of the final exams were over and done with, and the students were relaxed because they knew they would be graduating soon, Loretta took Freddy with her in the car and they drove to a grassy spot on a hill just outside the town. Freddy knew the place from his own high school days – he had lost his virginity there, to a girl who smelled like canned vegetables and had hair that had been hacked off in chunks and smoked copious amounts of cigarettes. He couldn't remember her name now. Elaine or Ethel or Edna or something. He couldn't even remember the experience very well. He knew it had been dark, and they had been clumsy, and it had been over quickly and so had whatever relationship they'd had.

And now Loretta was bring him here, and she didn't seem to have a clue about any of that. If Freddy was still a teenager, perhaps he would have thought she was simply being coy, playing hard to get. But he wasn't; he was grown up now, and he knew that she was just too innocent to realise. She thought it was a pretty spot (especially the tree with the blossoms, she'd said), and as she turned off the engine she didn't seem particularly interested in Freddy's advances, although she conceded to a couple of kisses, and moving into the back seat (for leg room, she said).

"But look," she insisted, gesturing out over the town. They could see the lights of half of Springwood from where the hill was situated, glowing in the night like a horde of thousands of fire flies. "Isn't it lovely?"

"Stunning," murmured Freddy, and nudged her with his nose, lips nipping her neck.

"Fred, stop," she chuckled. "Can't you just enjoy the view?"

"How can I when I've got such a beautiful view right here?" asked Freddy, and Loretta laughed, not realising he was looking down her shirt.

His hand was resting on her knee, and after a few kisses pressed to her neck she allowed him to kiss her on the lips again, and his hand began to move further up her thigh, petting the fabric of her dress. His finger curled around the hem of it, pulling it out of his way, and he slipped his hand under, stroking her skin. It was very soft. His other hand was on her hip, gripping firmly, making sure to hold her in place, but she pulled her hand away from him.

"Fred, what are you doing?" she asked.

"What do you think?" said Freddy, and his voice came out a low growl. Loretta's hands flew to her dress, and she swatted Freddy away.

"Don't do that!"

"Why?" asked Freddy, and leant closer and kissed her neck again. Her skin was smooth and hot, and he murmured into it, "Don't you want to?"

"I—I don't know," said Loretta. "I mean, no!"

Freddy pulled his head away from her. "What? Why not, Loretta?"

"Because," she said, "because, well – you know I haven't ever done it before."

"So do it now," said Freddy, and he tried to kiss her, but Loretta pushed his head away.

"I _can't_, Fred, I don't... I don't think I'm ready." She looked at him with wide eyes, trying to appeal to him. Freddy frowned.

"But I thought you liked me."

"I _do_," she insisted. "I just... I think..."

"Yes?" said Freddy, his finger tracing little circles low down her leg. "Isn't this nice?"

"It is," said Loretta, "but I don't think I can... I mean..."

"Uh-huh...?"

"If my father found out," said Loretta, and Freddy knew she was inventing, "he would go ballistic. Like, totally insane."

"Huh," said Freddy, and he slid his hand a little further up under her dress, fingers caressing the flesh there. "But you won't tell."

"Fred, _stop_. I don't want to—"

But he couldn't stop, not know that he had gotten so close. Loretta's protests grew weaker, but not so weak that Freddy didn't enjoy them. This, he knew, if anything was, was wrong. He could tell, instinctively. Although Loretta did not fight him, and although she responded in the way people were supposed to respond to what they did, he knew that he shouldn't have been doing it. But the fact that he shouldn't made him want to do it more – partly because it excited him and partly because he resented having boundaries.

"Trust me," he told Loretta when they were finished, and she was shaking but looking at him with wide and hopeful eyes, "it's all right. I'm not just using you."

"I know," she said, and rested her head on his shoulder, and he pretended to care about what she had just gone through. It was tedious, and he _was_ just using her, and she was a stupid bitch, but she was at least a stupid bitch who would now let him fuck her, and that was enough.

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Freddy's such a nice guy, isn't he?  
Please leave a review, I would really appreciate it! :)


	9. Normal Family

**part ix: normal family**

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She didn't tell her father. But she came to him a few days later, when she was on her lunch and should have been by rights studying in the library for her upcoming exam, and asked began to talk to him hurriedly under the guise of asking him to help her look for something in the lost and found.

"I think Madison knows about us," she said, in a low voice as Freddy said loudly, "Is this what you were looking for, dear?"

"She was making fun of me in home room yesterday. She's really mad at me right now—" Here, Loretta went on to explain some teenage girl thing that Freddy didn't give a shit about—"and I think she might tell the principal."

"Well, we'll just have to keep looking," said Freddy loudly, as the other kids wandered past in the halls, and, "What do you want me to do about it?" he muttered.

"I don't want you to get into trouble," said Loretta. "It's not so bad for me, because I'm a minor, but if anyone found out, you would be in big trouble."

Freddy had to appreciate the fact that she never tried to use this against him. She never attempted to blackmail him or try to manipulate him. Not that it would have worked, but he appreciated that she wasn't stupid enough to try. She must have – she did – really like him for whatever reason, and he liked that she liked him. It was nice, in a way, because it made him feel rather like other people must have felt. No, their relationship was not normal, but it had been so long since Freddy had had any sort of relationship that this was as close as he was going to get. And in an effort to make himself seem more normal, because he didn't want the kids at the school _knowing_ he was what they thought of as a freak rather than just suspecting it, Freddy quit his job at the school.

Loretta was very upset when he told her at first. They were sitting together in her car, in the parking lot outside a milkshake bar, late at night. Loretta had become rather more lax about her father's rules as of late. Freddy knew it was because of him. She seemed to have given everything up for him; she rarely spoke about her friends any more and when she did it was in a scathing sort of way that said she wished she didn't have to.

She gaped at him with eyes open wide when he broke the news to her. He supposed he could have done it more gently, but that didn't concern him.

"You're... leaving me?" she asked eventually, her voice hoarse.

"No, I'm leaving my job. I thought that was what you wanted."

"We won't see each other any more."

"Yes, we will. That's why I'm quitting. Because of you. You said people would talk. Now they can't." Freddy narrowed his eyes and surveyed her. "I'm giving up everything for you; I would have thought you would have been grateful, Loretta."

"Oh, I am," said Loretta quickly, and looked down at her hamburger. They had stopped at a fast food joint before coming here; it was where they spent most of their nights together. Freddy didn't like to take her back to his house, really – he hated his house, and he didn't like to be there himself if he could help it. He spent a lot of the time when he was at home in the garden, cultivating the bushes. He had a large pair of hedge-trimmers that had seen a lot of usage since he had moved in, and very neat hedges. He slept in Mr Underwood's old room, which was a room he had never really been in when he was a child, because it felt new and different and not at all like the room he had stayed awake shivering in when he was a child, and he never went into the basement if he could help it.

Freddy sucked on the end of his milkshake straw and watched Loretta closely. He sometimes thought she was a bit scared of him. He didn't know why. He hadn't ever hurt her, had he? He was always good to her, paid for the food they bought and gave her money for gas. He listened to her drone on about how tough calculus was and how she needed to lose a couple of pounds, but he didn't agree with her about that (aloud, anyway) because that was not what he was supposed to do. All right, he admitted to himself, maybe he didn't treat her like a goddess, but so what? She wasn't one.

He talked her round into the understanding that what he was doing was all for her, and he left the school. In truth, he was just pleased to have a reason to leave, because he was sick of scrubbing toilets and replacing broken light bulbs but most of all because of the children.

But cleaning and mopping and mending light bulbs was all he was good for, and he spent weeks attending interviews for jobs both he and his perspective employer knew he would never be up to before he was accepted into a position as a janitor at the Springwood power plant. It wasn't quite the same as the school, though there were still halls to be mopped and light bulbs to be replaced – there was a large boiler room that he was responsible for keeping clean and running, and most of all there were no kids running about and snickering when they thought his back was turned. Freddy didn't mind it so much; in fact, he rather liked it there. He felt at peace, and comfortable just being left alone to do his job, and he was certainly grateful to have a break from seeing Loretta all day every day.

But Loretta was ever keener to see him, now, and when they were together, she seemed very anxious somehow that he was planning to leave her. She thought, perhaps, that he was having an affair with one of the female power plant employees, though Freddy explained time and time again that there were no women he knew of working there. Some nights, though, she would get very frantic about it, insisting that Freddy had been late to meet her after he was finished work – and why was he working late anyway – and why was he wearing a different shirt than he had been this morning?

I was walking slowly – there was a loose screw in the boiler room – I got oil on my shirt. Yes, Mr Underwood, no, Mr Underwood, right away, Mr Underwood, _sir_.

One night her unfounded whining got too much for him and that was when Freddy snapped. It wasn't just the accusations – Freddy didn't care about that. It was just the constant _bitching_, going on and on and on, on top of all her petty complaints, and Freddy didn't know how much more of it he could take. Loretta wasn't yelling at him, but she just wouldn't shut up, and she was too close to his face and he was sick of it.

"Shut _up_, bitch!" he snarled, as the side of her face met with his hand and she jerked backwards. She looked at him in hurt and confusion, but she did shut up, and Freddy was pleased with that. He hadn't hit her _hard_. But tears were welling in her eyes, and she whimpered, holding her own hand to the reddening side of her face.

"Fred... Why...?"

"It's not fair when you say things like that about me," Freddy told her, trying his best to sound calm and understanding, as though he was explaining it to a small child. "I don't like it."

"I'm sorry," whispered Loretta hoarsely, still staring at him in shock.

"It's okay," said Freddy gently, and he leant in towards her, reaching out a hand to cup her face. "I'm sorry I had to do that, Loretta, but everything's better now, isn't it?" He moved his hand down to grip her arm, and pressed his lips to her neck, kissing it softly. "I'm sorry if I hurt you, but you won't tell anyone, will you?"

"No," said Loretta in a shaking voice, and she drew a breath as though to hold back tears, and wrapped her arms around Freddy's back, as she always did. "I-I won't tell, Fred."

After just about a year, Loretta had graduated, and Freddy didn't attend the ceremony. She seemed to have fallen out with her father, for some reason, perhaps to do with her growing teenage rebellion or the fact that she told Freddy she had exploded at him one night over her secret relationship with him. Loretta's father had found out somehow – Freddy didn't think she was hiding it particularly well, though – and they had had a fight. She'd turned up on his doorstep late one evening, sobbing and raving incoherently. She had taken her in and they had stayed up until the early hours of the morning while he helped her sort out her problems. There was only one solution they could come to. Loretta was _not_, absolutely not, going to go back and speak with her father first unless he apologised for all the nasty things he had said, and according to her, that was not likely to happen any time soon. So they had to find somewhere for Loretta to go. She had no money to move out on her own, no-one to live with and no job. It seemed very logical to Freddy.

But neither of them – because Loretta had been brought up in a conservative home, and she felt guilty every time she did something with Freddy she knew her father wouldn't have approved of, and because Freddy just wanted to be normal and he didn't want people to talk about him – wanted to share a home out of wedlock. So when Loretta was just three weeks out of high school and barely eighteen, the two of them got married.

It was a small wedding, at a tiny chapel a few towns over. Some members of Loretta's extended family, whom Freddy suspected were there only for the booze, attended. He hadn't invited anyone himself. He didn't have anyone to invite. Loretta's parents, of course, were not in attendance, though. She said she had sent an invite to her mother, but she cried after the ceremony as she told Freddy that her father must have torn it up.

She was still in her wedding gown. It was made of cheap, scratchy white lace, but from a distance it looked quite nice, and she was wearing make up, as she rarely did, though the mascara was running and gave her rather the appearance of a creature that had been dragged up from the bottom of the lake. She had looked beautiful as they had exchanged their vows, though – she really had, and Freddy had felt a little flicker of something at the joy on her face. But now she just looked downright miserable, and he didn't know how much more it would take to make her happy. He had given her all he could.

"You can hardly be surprised," he said to her, as they sat together on the steps outside, most of the guests standing around in the sunshine and drinking cheap champagne from paper cups. "I told you not to tell."

That didn't seem to do his new wife's mood any good, though, and he felt whatever flicker had been inside of him earlier die down. His shirt collar felt too tight, and the black jacket was too warm for the late summer's day. But when they got home that night, it was all right, because Loretta seemed to want to forget about her father, and she wanted to focus, she said, on having a proper life with Freddy. And Freddy agreed with her – if only to get her to shut up – and for a while they were normal.

Loretta ended up not getting a job. She wasn't qualified for anything, really, except working in a burger bar. She had, for a while, before she and Freddy had become close, but she had quit so as to spend more time with him. Now, when he was out working at the power plant, she was at home on her own, but she said that this was a good thing.

"I'm a mature woman now," she told him, over spaghetti she had made one night, as they sat together in the kitchen at the table and tried as best they could to be a normal married couple. "I'm not some silly high school kid. I want to stay here and look after the home, not work in a burger bar with a bunch of sixteen year olds. Is that all right with you?" she asked.

"Sure," said Freddy, trying and failing to twist his spaghetti round his fork, then eventually just taking a knife to it and shovelling it in. "Whatever you want, sweetheart."

"I want us to have a proper little family," continued Loretta, beaming, and Freddy nearly choked.

"_What_?"

"You know – just like everyone else does. Come on, Fred, this'll be good for us. What's the point in me trying to make such a beautiful home and you working so hard if we don't have anyone to give it to?"

"Hmph," said Freddy.

Kids had never been in his plan at all. He hated them, and they hated him. He didn't know why, but he supposed it was an aura he gave out. They seemed to act uneasy around him, and he was reminded to strongly of the kids from his old school when he saw them playing in the streets. He had never been a part of that, and he resented it. But that was normal, after all, and Freddy now had the chance to be normal, and he wanted to take it. He wanted to have a nice little suburban home and a garden with rose bushes and a dog and children he could play with in the garden and a wife who brought them lemonade on warm summer evenings.

"All right," Freddy told her with a smile when he returned from work several evening later, and Loretta was on her hands and knees under the kitchen sink, scrubbing at the cupboards there. "Let's do it. Let's try for a kid."

"What?" said Loretta, and tried to sit up so fast that her head collided with the top of the sink. She winced and rubbed it, but she grinned at Freddy. And looking at her in such a mess with her hair in her face and grime covering her clothes, but looking so happy, Freddy couldn't help but grin, too.

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	10. The Kruegers

**part x: the kruegers**

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They tried for months. Loretta seemed focused on becoming the perfect housewife, on doing everything for Freddy. Freddy certainly wasn't complaining. When he had a hard day at work, she was always waiting for him at home with food on the table and a smile on her face, and that made everything better. And at night, when Freddy couldn't sleep, she didn't even attempt to resist his advances, because, after all, it had been her idea in the first place. Sometimes, though, Freddy got the feeling that she was sick of it, and sometimes, when he came home, she didn't have the dinner ready, but was sitting on the couch and watching TV. Freddy hated that. She would protest that she had been working hard all day and that she needed a moment to rest her feet. That frustrated Freddy greatly.

One day he came home to find her dusting shelves in the basement. She hummed as she worked, a bouncy rock 'n' roll tune that he remembered being popular when she had been at school playing on the radio.

"Loretta?" he called, coming down the basement steps, hovering near the bottom. He didn't want to go in any further. He had the irrational nagging feeling that something bad would happen if he did. "Loretta, honey, what are you doing?"

"Hi, Fred!" she said, turning and making her way over to where he stood. "I was just cleaning this old place up. Don't you think it would be really nice if we could make it into a games room or something for when the little ones come along? We don't really use it for anything right now, and—"

Freddy stared at her in fury, lips pressed tight together. The basement, as he remembered it, was a place of pain and suffering, and to suggest that they put their child there to play was sick. His face contorted to a snarl, and he grabbed hold of Loretta's wrist, his grip so tight she dropped the feather duster she was holding. And he pulled her, stumbling, up the stairs, as she cried out in shock.

"Fred! What are you doing? What's the matter? What's wrong?"

At the top of the stairs, Freddy pulled her forwards and slammed her against the wall. "What were you thinking going down there, bitch? I don't want you ever going down there, and I don't want our kids playing there, you understand that?" The back of his hand smacked her across the face, and she yelped. "Do you _understand_?"

"Yes, yes, I do Fred, I do, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..." She began to cry, but Freddy didn't care. He just grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, because he hated that basement and not being reminded of it was more important, much more important, than Loretta not being hurt, wasn't it?

"Don't you ever, ever go down there."

"I won't, Fred, I won't; I'm so sorry..."

Her chest quivered with almost silent sobs as Freddy let go of her and stood back, aware that his own breath was coming in hard, harsh pants. "I'm sorry," he said eventually, and tried not to look at the open door. "I just think it would be best if you didn't go into the basement, all right?"

"All right," whimpered Loretta.

"Good girl," Freddy crooned, and raised a hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Then, his face close her hers, he kissed her hard. She tensed, but didn't pull away.

Shortly after that, Loretta fell pregnant, and one day, Freddy got a call at work saying she had been rushed to the hospital as she went into labour. She had been in the garden, watering the plants, when it had happened, and a neighbour had heard her cries of pain. Freddy only wished he had been there; it seemed like it should have been him, rather than some nosy bitch from next door. She'd had a kid, too, just recently. She wasn't married, and it was an ugly kid, with a head covered in straggly hair and a nose like a squashed tomato. Its face was constantly bright red, and it was about the size and shape of a meatloaf, and Freddy had been forced to smile at it as it lay in its pram when he and Loretta went for walks in the park. She adored the baby – Freddy supposed it must have been the hormones, because it wasn't the sort of baby anyone but its mother could really love – but he tolerated its face for the sake of Loretta and their unborn child, whom Freddy was sure would end up as its playmate.

As soon as he had heard Loretta was in the hospital, he left work and rushed up there, catching the nearest taxi cab and turning up the pristine white halls in his oily work clothes and feeling terribly befuddled and out of place.

But he was led into the maternity ward, and there was his wife holding a warm little bundle, and Freddy felt a spark of something inside him that he hadn't felt since his wedding day. And this feeling smouldered and didn't die out when he saw the baby cry. If anything, it grew stronger. Loretta, her face tired but happy, passed him the bundle, and he looked down into a round, soft face with wide blue eyes, and he was happy. It was a girl, and they called her Katherine, and just like that they became The Kruegers.

They brought her home a couple of days later, into a room that Freddy had painted especially for her. They hadn't known if the baby would be a boy or a girl, so he'd painted it an off white colour. It had been a spare room when he was growing up, and he didn't feel bad about letting his daughter sleep there. There wasn't anything, after all, to be scared of. It wasn't the room where nightmares thrived or where Freddy had bled out his anger at the world.

As Katherine grew, Freddy was overwhelmed every day by how much she didn't hate him. To her, it seemed as though he was God – and to her, he thought, he probably was. The role of the Father fitted him like a glove. Whenever Katherine cried in the night, he was there by her side, singing her back to sleep and changing her diaper when she cried. Loretta often remarked to the neighbours about how good Freddy was with her, and Freddy began to feel a little more normal and resent kids a little less. His little girl was his princess, and he vowed never to allow her to live through what he had had to suffer as a child. He swore to himself that he would never let anyone hurt her.

The Kruegers, for a while, were just a normal family living on Elm Street. Everyone knew them; they waved hello to them when they saw them in the mornings and invited them to their own kids' birthday parties. That was something Freddy had never gotten to do as a child, and that was a benefit of having a daughter that he enjoyed a lot more than he felt he should. He would sit with the adults and sip drinks and pretend to pay attention to their boring conversations, while really listening to the kids playing in the garden. He liked the sound of their laughter, and he liked the fact that Katherine could be involved in that. He had wanted that for himself, but if he could give it to his little girl, that would be the next best thing.

Loretta got herself involved in a ladies' reading club a couple of houses down from them, where she was initially known Kathy Krueger's mom. Apparently, she'd met the other women when she'd gone to pick their daughter up from school. And she introduced Freddy to her new friends as he kissed her cheek and gave them a smile, shaking their hands and saying it was nice to meet them.

"We'll have to have you all over for dinner sometime, won't we, Fred? And bring the kids, it'll be lovely."

And for a while, they were normal. And then Katherine came home from school one day with a split lip and tears in her eyes, a ribbon in her hair undone, and Freddy was livid.

"Who did this to you, sweetheart?" he asked her, crouching down to her level and stroking her cheek with one finger. "Hm? Tell Daddy, he can make it all better."

Loretta shook her head and went into the kitchen, saying: "It's no use, Fred, I've asked her, but I don't think she wants to talk about it right now. Her doll was stolen. I told her not to bring it with her to school, but does she ever listen...?" And then she started opening cupboards and getting the dinner ready. Freddy rolled his eyes. His wife just didn't understand their little girl in the same way he did. She would talk to him.

"What happened?" he asked. "Did one of the big kids do this?"

Sniffling, Katherine nodded.

"Who was it?" asked Freddy, and Katherine shook her head. "Don't you know?"

Katherine whimpered, and cast her eyes downwards. Eventually, she spluttered a name: "Ann—Annie Carmichael."

"Right," said Freddy, cupping a finger under his daughter's chin and raising her head so that she was looking him in the eye. "Well, the next time Annie Carmichael ever tries to take your dolly or to pull your hair, you come and tell me right away, okay? Then maybe she'll learn her lesson." _And maybe I'll teach her a lesson right now_, he thought to himself. He had to step up and stand back, because he was shaking. How could anyone treat his daughter in that way? Where were the girl's parents, that she had never learned that it wasn't okay to hit or to steal? Where were the people that should have been teaching her that that was Very Wrong Indeed to do that to someone who didn't deserve it. Freddy could hardly think straight, but he had a vague idea in his head that was scaring him. "Loretta?" he called, with a tremor in his voice, and his wife poked her head from around the kitchen door. "Loretta, why don't you take Katherine out for an ice cream? I think she's a little upset."

"Fred, I've just put the dinner on. Can't you—?"

"Go, Loretta," he snapped, and she frowned at him. Then she looked to her crying daughter, snivelling at Freddy's feet, and sighed.

"Come on, then, darling, what do you say we take the car into town and get some chocolate ice cream?"

Katherine looked to her father, and then to her mother with wide and hopeful eyes. "Do you mean it?"

"Of course," said Loretta, her lips curling into a smile. "Now, why don't you go and get ready?"

"Yay!"

Lost doll apparently forgotten, Katherine skipped away to her bedroom to tie her hair back or put clean shoes on or whatever it was she had to do. For a moment, Loretta remained in the kitchen doorway, gazing at her husband, but he didn't look at her. Gaze focused stonily ahead, and fists clenching at his sides, his lips curled into a snarl and he did not look at her. Loretta took a breath, almost about to say something, but then decided against it. She gave Freddy one last, worried look, and then she left to prepare herself for the trip.

Freddy stayed in the same position, eyes focused on one spot, until he heard the car start up and leave the drive way. They were gone now, and he didn't want to scare his little girl. He knew she was no longer upset about what had happened, but he still felt her pain and it reminded him of his own and he was furious. He couldn't remember anything but the children who had taunted him when he was no older than his daughter had been, and how unfair it was, and how much he had hated them. How they had made him feel like he deserved the pain dealt to him by both Mr Underwood and himself. How they had made him want to die. How they had made him want to _kill_.

And, remembering that, he wandered blindly across the hallway, in a daze, and before he knew what he was doing, he had descended the steps and found himself in exactly the same spot he had been when that feeling had been at its strongest. When had had forgotten he wanted to die, when he had forgotten the pain, and stopped feeling it. When all he had been left with was the urge to kill, and when he had acted on it.

And then he realised that that was where he had put the razor he'd been holding then, when he had returned, all those years ago. He had forgotten about it, because it didn't seem important. He hadn't needed to hurt himself – couldn't hurt himself – any more, so he had hidden the razor he didn't want but could bear to let go. Because that razor was a part of him, a part of his history, and he couldn't bear the thought of someone else laying their hands on it. He had hidden it in a crack between the bricks in the basement wall, still wrapped up in a bloody dust rag, and he had left it there and forgotten about it and never gone into the basement since.

And now he pulled it out, and the bits that weren't crusted in blood and eroded with the years were shining as they had always done in the street lamp haze at night, good as new and just like old times, and he remembered the pain of it, and he remembered the pain of the children's taunts, and, oh, it was wrong, but he so badly wanted to teach them a lesson.

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	11. Come and Play With Freddy

Due to the sensitive nature, another warning: from here on in, expect graphic descriptions of violence against children.

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**part xi: come play with freddy**

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He put the razor in his back pocket and he set off on foot, down the road that led to the park. He knew Annie Carmichael would probably be there – he knew who she was, but he had never really paid her attention before now. But he knew she was blonde haired and blue eyed and wore a pink ribbon in her hair most days. And he knew that she went to the local kindergarten, and that the parents of the kids who went there usually allowed their kids to play in the park after school. It was behind a row of houses, and everyone in the neighbourhood knew one another. The kids played jump rope and swung on the swings, and a couple of parents were usually dozing on the benches or rocking a pram with a screaming baby back and forth. Most of the kids' parents considered it a fairly safe place to play, and some of them even left their kids alone – as they knew the other parents there, and perhaps trusted them to watch over them. Besides, their house was only a street over, and they could see the park from their window. And they lived in a safe neighbourhood; what could possibly happen to their children in the five minutes that they were not looking out of the window?

Freddy had to wait outside of the gate and down the path for a little while before Annie Carmichael decided to leave the park. She skipped out after yelling goodbyes to her play mates, telling them that she was going for dinner and would come back later. And there she was, clutching Katherine's doll in her hand, as bold as brass. Freddy's fingers curled.

There was a part of the path – a stretch of several feet – that could not be seen from any of the houses on the street, and that was where Freddy was standing, and that was where he approached her.

"Annie?" he said, looking down at the little girl, and she looked back up at him with wide blue eyes that reminded him of something from his childhood.

"Mr Krueger?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yes," said Freddy, and he remembered all of a sudden what her eyes made him think of. They were the most beautiful shade of forget-me-not blue, the exact same shade as Alyssa's had been. He stretched out a hand and gripped her shoulder, pulling him closer to him and peering around the corner. He would have to take her away for this; give her a bit of a talking to. No-one was in the window of her house, Freddy saw as his eyes darted over in that direction, but he knew he had to move fast. Irresponsible as her parents obviously were, he knew they would soon come looking for her if she did not arrive for dinner. "Come with me," said Freddy, and he took her by the hand, the one that wasn't holding his daughter's doll. He led her off the path, not quite sure where he was going, except that it was somewhere where no-one would be able to see him.

"Where are we going?" asked Annie petulantly, trying to tug her little hand out of his grip. "I need to go to dinner."

"There's been a change of plan," growled Freddy, and realised he was heading in the direction of the power plant. Good. That was good. It was locked up for the evening, but he had a set of keys. "You're coming with Freddy now."

"Who's Freddy?"

"I am."

"Oh. Why am I going with you?" whined Annie. "We were gonna have hamburgers."

"You're not any more," said Freddy.

"Are you mad at me?" asked Annie.

"Of course not," snarled Freddy. "Why would you think that?" She was walking too slowly, and her feet were dragging on the ground. Her shoes were scuffing, and she was making angry little noises. Freddy hoped no-one would see them. The weather was dull, so the streets were empty, and Freddy had taken a short cut, across the grassy swells that surrounded the park and that the trees ensured were largely out of the view of the houses.

"Did Kathy tell you what I did?" she asked, her voice a nasal whine. "'Cause I said I was sorry. She _said_ I could have her dolly."

They were at the power plant now, and Freddy reached into his pocket with his free hand for the keys to the gate. Fumbling awkwardly, he pushed it open, and shoved Annie inside before slamming it behind him with a resounding clang. "Didn't anyone ever tell you lying was wrong?" he said, looking down into her face. Her cheeks were fat and tear stained; she had been crying silently.

"Are you going to punish me?" she asked, as he pushed her in the small of the back and made her walk in front of him to the boiler room, which was easily located from the entrance and which Freddy knew none of the regular power plant workers ever had to go into.

"No, no," said Freddy, as he unlocked the door and made her walk inside. "We're just going to play."

"Play?" asked Annie. Freddy let go of her, closed the door and shut it behind him, making sure it was locked. "Is Kathy here?"

"No," said Freddy. "Just me." He wandered over to his work bench, and pulled on a pair of thick gloves. It was safest to do so when working around the boilers, and he didn't want to get burnt.

"Mr Krueger," said Annie in a small voice, looking around, "I don't like it here. Please can I go home? We can play tomorrow."

"No, no, Annie," said Freddy, and he knelt in front of her, reaching into his back pocket. "We're going to play now. Do you know, Annie, what _this_ is?" And he pulled out the razor, and it shimmered in the fire's flickering light.

Annie nodded. "It's a razor," she said. "D-daddy uses it sometimes to make his beard go away."

"That's funny," said Freddy. "I used it to make my daddy go away."

Annie looked at him, confused, and took a couple of unsteady steps backwards. She released the doll and it fell to the floor with a clatter. Freddy stood up and advanced towards her, and she looked into his eyes with confusion. The fire cast dancing shadows onto her face, and, for a moment, she _was_ Alyssa – that spoilt, cruel little girl who had made Freddy's life a living hell and that beautiful creature he had watched grow up, whom he'd loved. The girl on account of whom he'd first understood sex, and the woman he'd hated. And here she was, right in front of him, at his mercy.

"I'm sure you know what this can do," said Freddy, and he flicked it in front of her face, and laughed when she flinched. She was so utterly terrified, and she deserved it, for what she had done to him—to his _daughter_. For what she had done to his little girl. He knew he shouldn't be making her frightened, though, that was very, very wrong of him – but he was suddenly back in his childhood, and he wasn't normal and he wasn't part of just another family on Elm Street. He was, again, Freddy Krueger, the Bastard Son of a Hundred Maniacs, and guilt felt good, and he hated those children with every part of his existence.

"Mr Krueger, I don't like this game," whimpered Annie, and she turned her head to see where she could run, but there was nowhere to run to. Behind her was a large boiler, and it was radiating heat like an inferno, and to her left was a solid brick wall, and it was charred and burnt in the fire's glow. The little girl's face was wet with her tears and sweat, her blonde hair straggling and dark.

"Why?" said Freddy. "Are you afraid? Don't be afraid." And he pushed her into the wall – not roughly, but firmly, with his free hand. The heel of it was pressed into her shoulder, his fingers just brushing at the base of her neck. He lowered himself onto his haunches, so that he was on eye level with her, and he stroked her throat. He could feel her heart beating under her skin, fluttering and terrified. Well, good. "This won't hurt." And then he looked at the razor in his hand and chuckled. "Much. It'll just be a flesh wound, sweetie. Do you know what that is?"

It was the revenge he never got on the children at his school, and then some. He was thinking about Alyssa as he ran his fingers over the fabric of Annie's blue dress, lower, lower... He was thinking about Alyssa the entire time he was with Annie in the boiler room, and she was so pretty, and so soft, and it gave him such a shock of pleasure to hear her scream like that when he lifted the razor.

He hadn't done anything wrong, he reasoned with himself, in that instant just before he cut her. All he had done was stroke her leg, all he had done was look at her and think about her and not for very long—But it wasn't wrong, not really, because he remembered how he'd felt when he was young and didn't understand it all. He'd felt shameful and guilty and now he knew that it wasn't something to feel shameful and guilty about. Was it? His heart drummed in his ears and he couldn't think straight. He knew Annie hadn't liked him touching her, and that was why he had stopped, but didn't she deserve it, after all, because she was Alyssa, she _was_, and she'd grow up to be just like her and all the pain she got would be no more than what she caused and she deserved it all.

"Don't – scream," he growled, cupping his hand over his mouth. "Someone might hear, and I don't want you to tell anyone about this. This is our secret, all right?"

She cried out under his hand, and her breath tickled his palm. He couldn't make her out, but he wanted to reassure her that it was all right, and what they were doing was okay, and it wasn't something she ought to feel bad about. Alyssa had probably done much more with dozens of boys, and that was how Annie was going to turn out, too. And as for what Freddy was _about_ to do to her...Well, he liked that she was frightened, but he would rather she wouldn't scream quite so much. It made him enjoy it more, and feel worse about it at the same time, and he could do without that confusion. He knew what he wanted to do; he knew what he _had_ to do, and he didn't want her putting him off.

He took a breath and focused. "This is what – you – get," he said, as he flicked the razor blade back and forth across her chest, "for – hurting – my little – girl. You understand, you little bitch?"

The girl was howling in pain and her arms were flailing uselessly, pounding the side of Freddy's head as she tried to pull away, but his other arm held her tight against the wall. She was crying so loud that Freddy wasn't even sure if she heard him, but he knew that she understood, and, really, what else could he make her do but understand? She would never touch his darling Katherine again, that was for sure – he wouldn't let her, and he wouldn't let anyone else. Katherine was the only person who had never hated him, and he was not every going to allow her to suffer like he had. Protecting her felt good – and revenge felt good.

Freddy drew the razor harder across the girl's chest, over her stomach. She screamed in agony, and her dress ripped apart and blood began to soak into it. And then Freddy lifted the razor and drew it across her throat, and she stopped screaming, and just gulped and gurgled uselessly.

"Good night, sweetheart," said Freddy, as her body went limp against the wall. He let her drop, and she collapsed on the floor, twitching slightly, and then she was still.

Freddy stepped backwards, her blood covering his gloves, but none, thankfully, had stained his clothes. He was much more careful than that – he was sick of Loretta reprimanding him about stains on his shirt, sick of being told what to do. Well, no-one would tell him what to do, ever again. No-one would ever hurt him, or his daughter, ever again.

His blade was bloody and the doll lay discarded across the room. Freddy looked to it, and then to the body of the girl. Would anyone know it had been him? No, of course not, no-one had seen; Freddy had made sure of that. He wanted to bring the doll back to Katherine, but he knew that he couldn't. If Loretta realised that he had retrieved the stolen toy, and then it transpired that the girl who had taken it had gone missing... Freddy didn't trust Loretta enough not to tell the cops...

Shit. Loretta. She and Katherine would be home shortly, and what's more, Alyss—Annie's parents would be out looking for her. If they saw Freddy making his way back...

He knew he didn't have much time. He had to hide the body, to make sure no-one ever knew it was him... And wasn't it wonderful that he had an enormous fiery boiler just in front of him?

He wasn't disgusted with himself for killing the girl – he wasn't even sure that she had deserved it, but he had enjoyed it, and that was good – but he found it hard to look as he lifted her by the hair, being careful not to stain his clothes, and opened the boiler. And then he tossed her inside, and winced and looked away, holding his arm over his face as the fire spat its thanks and the skin began to sear. He slammed the door shut, and then turned away. Whatever had he done?

He had done the Right Thing, he assured himself. He needed an outlet, didn't he? Something to take out all that hurt and anger on. And if he was doing it to protect his daughter, then it was so much the better – right?

He arrived home before Loretta and Katherine did, and he made sure the dinner in the oven wasn't burning and that the table was set. And then he cleaned himself up, wiped the sweat from his brow, and sat on the couch with the TV on but silent, and pretended to read the newspaper. He wasn't really concentrating, of course. He was stuck staring at a picture on the sixth page, gazing intently at an article about shoe polish. And he was thinking how, in a few days' time, there would be a picture of Annie Carmichael in the newspaper, and her parents would be frantically asking questions of all their neighbours – "I just took my eye off her for a minute – Did anyone see her? – Do you know what happened?" And Loretta, shocked, would be comforting the mother and discussing it at her Book Club, and all the mothers would agree to hide their children, to make sure that whoever had done this awful, awful thing would never lay his hands on their children. And Freddy would be there, too, by her side, wearing a morose expression and saying how tragic it was, and everyone would think he was normal. He chuckled to himself and turned the page, and settled down to read the paper properly. There wasn't anything to feel guilty about when there were no consequences.

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	12. Princess

**part xii: princess**

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When Katherine arrived home, she seemed much more cheerful. She didn't seem keen to finish her dinner, though, and that displeased Loretta.

"Fred, I told you it was a bad idea to let her have an ice cream before dinner," she said, frowning at Katherine. "Katherine, eat your greens."

"But, Mommy..."

"Leave her be, Loretta," said Freddy. "She's had a little disappointment today. She'll eat up all her greens tomorrow – won't you, princess?"

"Yes, Daddy," Katherine grinned, and Loretta shook her head, though a smile played about her lips.

"You spoil her, Fred."

"Of course I do," said Freddy. "She's my little girl." And he lifted a hand to pinch her cheek between his thumb and his forefinger, and Katherine giggled.

The Kruegers were just like any other family on the street.

That night, Freddy tucked Katherine into bed, and that was when she began to get upset once more about her doll. She's always carried that thing around with her, and though Freddy had thought it was ugly and bulky and silly of her to do, he understood how much it meant to her, and it hurt him that he couldn't give it back to her. She couldn't sleep without it, though, and she sat up in bed and refused to allow him to tuck the blankets around her.

"Tell me a story," she whimpered, bottom lip stuck out. "I can't go to sleep without my dolly but if you told me a story that would help."

"A story?" said Freddy, and he perched himself on the edge of her bed, and she snuggled into him as he put an arm around her. "What sort of story, sweetheart?"

"A story about a princess and a castle and an evil witch... or a dragon," said Katherine, and she beamed up at him. "You tell them best, Daddy, better than Mommy does."

"Uh-oh. You better not let Mommy hear you say that."

"Why not? It's true." Katherine buried her face into Freddy's shirt. "You smell like laundry," she mumbled, and Freddy laughed.

"Okay," he said, and lifted her onto his lap, shifting himself onto the bed so that he could better speak to his daughter. "In a land far away—"

"No, Daddy, you have to start with 'once upon a time'. It's not a proper story if you don't start with 'once upon a time'."

"All right, honey, I'm sorry. Once upon a time, there was a princess who lived in a beautiful castle. She was the most beautiful princess in the whole entire land, and there were many princes who wanted her hand in marriage. But the princess did not want to be married – she wanted to stay living in the castle with her mommy and daddy, the king and the queen. One day, the princess was playing in the woods in the garden outside the castle, when she heard a noise. She went to investigate—"

"What does 'investigate' mean?"

"It means to check something out."

"Okay. Go on."

Freddy smiled. "So the princess went to investigate the noise—"

"To check it out."

"Exactly. And it turned out that it was another young princess, with beautiful golden hair, and she said to _our_ princess, 'Don't you want to come and play with me?'" He did a voice for the little girl, because he knew Katherine liked the characters to come alive in her head. And, indeed, she was staring at him in fascination. "And our little princess, being the adventurous and friendly type that she was, did not want to say no. So she said, 'Yes, I will come and play with you,' and she followed the other little girl into the woods.

"But they walked for hours, deeper and deeper into the woods, and eventually our princess began to wonder where it was that they were going. She called out for the other princess to stop walking, but she didn't seem to hear her. She walked on in front of her, and woods got darker and thicker, and the rocks were crawling with _slimy_ moss and _disgusting_ worms, and there were big, black birds in the braches overhead that screamed and scared our princess when they took off from their perches with a flutter of their wings.

"The other princess walked forwards into the very darkest part of the woods, and then she stopped and turned to face our princess, who realised they were standing in front of the door of an old wooden cabin. The wood was yucky and rotten, and there were no lights on in the windows. 'This is my house,' said the other princess, and she opened the door with a _crrrreeeaaaakk_, and she went inside."

Katherine was staring at him, rapt.

"Our princess didn't want to be rude, so she followed the other princess inside. But when she got inside, she realised that it was not the princess's home at all. There was a long table in the middle of the cabin, covered in lots and lots of dirty jars and torture instruments, like scissors and nails. And one of the jars was filled with eyeballs!"

"Eww," said Katherine, and she pulled away, but continued staring at Freddy. He had her full attention, and he loved it.

"And at the far end of the cabin, there was an enormous black cauldron, and a figure with a long black cloak and a hood was standing over it. Whatever was in the cauldron was bubbling green, and it smelled awful, and our princess could smell it from the door. And then the figure turned, and it wasn't the princess at all, but an old, ugly witch!

Our princess screamed, and she walked backwards out of the cabin, not daring to take her eyes off of the witch. But the witch followed her, and she was very fast, and she grabbed the princess by the shoulders and she said, 'My spell has finally worked! Now I will transform into a mighty evil creature and I will eat you up!' And then she said the magic words, and she turned into giant dragon. And the dragon stared breathing fire, and the princess had to just behind a big rock to get away from it. But the dragon soon burnt that rock to a crisp, and the princess had nowhere else to hide.

"Just as the dragon was about to rear up and spit the final bit of fire it needed to destroy the princess, and the princess screamed and shut her eyes in fear – there was silence. The princess opened her eyes and saw the dragon lying headless on the ground. It was dead!"

Katherine gasped.

"And the princess looked up and there she saw her father, the king, riding on his lovely white horse. 'Daddy!' she cried, running towards him with her arms open, and he grabbed her and pulled her onto his horse and gave her a big hug. The king had been watching her, and he knew that when she had gone into the woods that there was something wrong, so he had followed her. And it was just as well that he did, for if he hadn't, who knows what might have happened to the princess? She could have been roasted and eaten by the dragon-witch!

"So they rode back to the castle together, and though the king was very worried, he was happy because his daughter was safe now, and that he had made her safe by killing the dragon. Although he was very scared of the dragon, too, he knew he wouldn't think twice about fighting it again if it was to save his daughter's life. So they rode back to the castle and that night they had a great big feast and they told the queen what had happened but she didn't believe them. It was just a story that the king and his daughter could share with one another. And later that night the king tucked the princess into bed and he told her a story about a little girl called Katherine who lived on Elm Street... and they all lived happily ever after. The end.

"And now, Katherine, you better go to sleep before _I_ have to eat _you_ up," said Freddy, and he grabbed her and pretended to bite her, instead kissing the back of her neck. She screamed with laughter, and tried to pull away.

"Daddy! Daddy, stop it!"

"What's going on in here?" asked Loretta, poking her head around the door. "Fred, I thought you were tucking her in."

"I was," said Freddy. "She knows she's got to go to sleep now, or else she'll get eaten, right, princess?"

"Right," nodded Katherine, and as Freddy stood up, she squirmed about, getting under the blankets and pulling them up to her chin. Loretta rolled her eyes and left, and Freddy stooped down to kiss his daughter's forehead.

"See? The queen doesn't believe them. Good night, Katherine."

"Good night, Daddy," said Katherine, as Freddy flicked the light switch and shut the door.

The articles about the missing little girl began to appear in the papers a couple of days later, just as Freddy thought they would have. Loretta had heard from Mrs Carmichael down the street about how little Annie had gone missing, and they were terribly worried about her, and if she saw anything, could Loretta please, please let her know? And Freddy stood with his wife, and arm around her shoulders, in the doorway, nodding sadly and assuring Mrs Carmichael that they would come straight to her if they saw or heard anything that might have to do with little Annie whatsoever. And then he watched the distraught mother make her way to the next house, and begin to say the same thing to them, and he and Loretta closed the door and went into the front room, where Katherine was watching TV.

"Do you think something awful's happened to her?" asked Loretta in a hoarse whisper, grabbing Freddy's arm and pulling him to a halt just outside the door to the front room. "Do you think there's someone... out there?"

Freddy looked at Loretta's hand gripping his arm in disdain, and, abashed, she let go of him. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe. Or maybe she just wandered off and got lost."

"You believe that?" asked Loretta, her eyes wondering to their daughter. "You think she'll turn up? Because it just doesn't seem likely, Fred, I mean, maybe she did wander off and get lost at first, but she hasn't been home for two days now and there are people out there who would... who would..."

"What, Loretta?"

"People who would... take _advantage_ of a lost little girl," finished Loretta with a deep breath and a shudder.

Freddy made a huffing sound. "We'll have to keep a closer eye on Katherine," he said in a low voice. "I wouldn't want anything to happen to her."

"No," Loretta agreed. "Not at all. I'm not letting her out of my sight, not until they find out what happened to Annie."

But they never did find out what happened to Annie. Freddy was good at hiding things. There were reports of her playing in the park, and reported of her being called for dinner by her mother, and reports of her leaving the park – but no-one in the town seemed to have a clue what had happened to her after that. No-one except, of course, Freddy, and he wasn't about to tell. Telling would mean facing the consequences, and the more he thought about what he had done that night in the boiler room, the more he realised that it had felt good. It was like he finally got to do what all those kids had done to him (mentally, at least) all those years ago, and it was like he finally got to get Mr Underwood back for the years of beatings and torment. And the more the thought about it, the more he enjoyed the memory.

But he was angry, too, and there were some things he wished he had done differently. He had wished it wasn't so messy, and that he hadn't done it in such a haze. He wished it was cleaner, and that he had thought even to clean the razor. That would have made it seem much more sophisticated – like he was exacting his revenge _properly_, rather than just a slap-dash attempt at working out his frustrations. The more he thought about it, the sicker he realised her was – he knew he _should_ be feeling sorry for the mother and guilty a thousand times over. But he didn't feel that. All he felt was annoyance that he hadn't done it exactly right, and excitement. He savoured the memory, revisited it when he was alone or when Loretta was standing washing dishes and he was supposed to be reading the paper. But, really, he was staring at the picture of her face, and remembering her scream when he'd last saw her alive, and wishing, oh, wishing so hard that he could do it again.

He felt guilty, then, about seeing the parents' faces as they walked their children home from school or watered the plants in their gardens, so he made an effort to be kinder to them, and their children, for what he had done. He waved to Mrs Martin, who lived next door, as they gardened alongside each other, and he gave her tips for keeping her rose bush looking healthy (alongside having to nod sympathetically and listen to her whine and worry and bitch about 'those monsters'). And he was kinder to the children, too – he'd pay for their ice creams from the ice cream truck when it sailed by on warm evenings, and smile at them and tell them to call him Freddy.

"None of this 'Mr Krueger' stuff; I'm not your school teacher. I'm your friend."

"You're being awfully sweet to the kids," Loretta murmured one night, when Katherine was asleep and they lay together in bed, Freddy with an arm draped over her waist, nuzzling the base of her neck.

"It's that little girl just disappearing like that," Freddy murmured back, and wondered if she suspected. "Makes you realise just how important kids – and family – are."

"Hmm," said Loretta, and she fell asleep in Freddy's arms, and Freddy knew then that she wasn't suspicious at all; she was just glad to have her family with her. And Freddy was glad to have his, too, but he couldn't stop thinking about the girl he had killed and wondering if it did make him a monster and maybe it did, but it was the monster that the kids had created themselves with their own words and their own thoughts and Freddy knew it he wouldn't be able to hold himself back for much longer before he did it again.

* * *

I know a lot of people are reading, but not a lot of people are reviewing, so I'll stop asking.

I will, however, take this moment to plug my other story _Remembering Freddy_, which I'd also like people to read (and obviously review; I can dream)!


	13. Christmas With The Kruegers

**part xiii: christmas with the kruegers**

* * *

And he was right. He hadn't meant for it to happen; he really hadn't. He was trying to fight the urges he felt, and to forget about how wonderful that release had felt. He was _trying_ to forget, but it wouldn't work. And then when he was closing up the power plant one evening, he happened to see a young boy, and that young boy had a bad attitude, and that young boy made the mistake of flicking a cigarette butt at him, and that young boy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Freddy had had a very hard day at work.

The boy couldn't have been more than six or seven; he was older than Katherine and Freddy knew he couldn't be at her school. He wasn't anything to him, and he probably wouldn't have given him a second glance if the boy hadn't flicked the butt at him. The ash burnt his neck and Freddy winced, and then turned slowly around to where the boy was chuckling.

"'Sthe matter, Mister, did I burn you?"

He seemed almost careless about it, and Freddy knew his type. He knew – now – that he was the sort of kid who didn't get any attention paid to him at home, the sort of kids who wanted to act out for attention but was too scared to do so where his parents could see. The sort of kid Freddy probably could have been himself if he wasn't scared of the consequences, and the sort of kid he had lived both in awe and terror of at school. He should have felt sorry for him and been on his way, but he could feel himself reliving his childhood (_not again, not again_), and the memories of Annie Carmichael and how good it had felt to kill her were starting to bubble up from the back of his mind.

Freddy took a couple of steps towards the kid. "Burn me?" he said, and the kid's eyes widened in shock – he wasn't used to getting a reaction, Freddy knew – and he took a couple of steps backwards, and found himself backed up again the chain link fence. "Burn me?" said Freddy again. "No, buddy – I'll show you what it's like to _burn_."

He grabbed the boy's arm and he struck out with a yell, but it didn't do any good. Freddy was much bigger than him, and much stronger – finally – and he pulled him through the gate, across the yard and into the boiler room, with the kid kicking and screaming all the while.

"No, don't, please sir, don't, I didn't mean—I'm sorry!"

"Huh," said Freddy, and he turned the boy around in the darkness of the boiler room and he grabbed the front of his t-shirt and he slammed him into the wall. "What would your mother say if she knew you were _smoking_, son?"

"I don't know," said the boy, who had realised now that he was not going to be able to escape Freddy and was now starting to cry. And that made Freddy laugh, because he'd never been able to make any of the boys cry before.

"You want to know what it feels like to burn?"

"No, sir—"

But Freddy had already taken hold of his wrist and slammed it into the nearest boiler, and the boy's words were broken off as they turned into a scream of agony. Freddy heard his skin sizzling against the metal, and to him it sounded good, and so did the scream, but he knew no-one outside would be able to hear it. It would be lost in the hissing of the engines and the gurgling of the water tanks, and that was perhaps the best part of it all. This was Freddy's secret.

He pulled the boy's arm away, and then he tossed him to the ground. "There," he said, as he watched him cradle the burnt flesh. "Hurts, doesn't it? But that's what you kids did to me, every day – not on the outside, but on the inside, and that's where it _really_ hurts."

The boy just whimpered and gasped in pain. "And now," said Freddy, and turned, leaving him there to go to his work bench. "I have a little surprise for you."

His hands flew across the desk in the dullness, searching for it. Where was it? It was hidden under the clutter of dozens of other tools, but it was there, and it he had cleaned it in the steaming water from the boiler and he had made sure that it was ready. No, he hadn't been planning to use it, but he needed to keep it, to keep it safe – after all, he hadn't been planning to use it the first time, either. He hadn't been planning to cut himself, and he hadn't been planning to take away the pain, and he hadn't been planning to kill, and to kill again, but now, here he was, and he wasn't able to stop himself.

"This razor," said Freddy, kneeling down in front of the crying boy, who was crouching in the corner and did not seem to have thought about running (probably because he was spoiled and not used to it at all), "is very special to me. Do you want to know why?" he asked, drawing it across the air in front of the boy, inches from his face. Shaking, the boy nodded – anything to get it over with, he seemed to be saying. "This razor," said Freddy, "is like... hm... Well, it's like a very special part of me. A part of me I only show to very special people. You're special, you know that? What's your name?"

"I-it's Willie," whimpered the boy.

"Willie," said Freddy. "Well, Willie, I don't know if your mom cares about you smoking or not, but I care. I do. Very much. And I do want you to know you're very special to me. I wouldn't be using this razor if I thought you didn't matter."

"W-what are you going to do with it?" asked Willie.

Freddy cocked his head. "What do people usually do with razor blades?"

The blade wasn't as sharp as it had once been, and it shuddered and faltered as Freddy drew it across the boy's skin. Willie howled as Freddy frowned, and plunged the blade further into the soft flesh on his stomach, which it tore through unevenly and left gaping gashes in. The insides of his gut began to spill out with the blood, and Freddy leap back as it poured onto the floor. The boy writhed for a few moments more as Freddy watched, thinking, and then he lay still. Freddy looked at the bloodied blade in his hands – it wasn't working like it had before. Maybe it was because he'd tried too hard this time. He'd need to sharpen it. To make the cuts a little cleaner. He didn't want things to get any messier.

Perhaps it was time to discard the razor. To find a new weapon, a better one. Freddy could hardly bear to part with it, though he knew he'd have to. He knew now, standing in the dark, hot boiler room with the body of a little boy lying at his feet, a little boy who had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, he would have to find himself a better weapon, because this wasn't something he would be able to stop doing, even if he'd wanted. Hands shaking with adrenaline – and, oh, that felt good – he hoisted the body into the boiler and slammed the door shut once again.

"This is getting to be a habit," he said aloud, to no-one in particular. And there was no-one around to make him break it.

He didn't discard the razor, though, because he was rather fond of it and he couldn't bring himself to. Instead, he kept it buried in his tools at work, and when he was alone, he took it out to look at it and remember. The memories of the pain it had caused and of killing Mr Underwood were starting to become clearer now, and he was less confused about them. He began to feel, as time passed and as he poked and prodded the memories fresh in his mind about the children's deaths, that despite what he had been told, killing those people _was_ the right thing to do. Why shouldn't he have done it? Why shouldn't he take from the world what it owed him?

Children weren't just children to him any more. They weren't just annoying little brats who screamed at their parents in the streets and couldn't understand that things had consequences. But they weren't just the little shits who'd bullied him and who'd now bullied Katherine, either. Each one of them was unique, Freddy realised. Because he began to watch them. He watched them when he picked Katherine up from school, and he watched them in the supermarket, and he watched them playing in the park. He watched them more intently than he had watched Alyssa when he had been a teenager. And he began to understand the differences in each of their routines, and their personalities – and he began to formulate an idea, somewhere at the back of his mind, about what would be the best way to get each of them on their own so that he could hurt them in the most effective way. It would be doing them an injustice, he thought, not to preserve their memories. His children. Their parents couldn't protect them any longer. They were his now.

He became, however, much more protective of Katherine. It was partly because he felt he needed to put on that front, to seem normal – because all the other parents were going out of their heads with worry at the disappearance of another child. Freddy held Loretta tighter at night, and swore he would never let that monster touch their little girl, and he meant it, too. He would never do anything to harm Katherine. She meant the world to him; she was so much more beautiful and innocent and sweet than the others, and she really loved him. And he loved her, too: for the first time in his life, he honestly loved something. It was a strange feeling, and he didn't know how to explain it, and it made him feel uneasy and sick with worry at times, but it was a _good_ feeling, too, and sometimes, having her snuggle into his chest as he sat on the couch or hearing her giggle as she played with her mother in the garden felt even better than killing did.

So he didn't kill any more until after Christmas. Loretta was stressing, but Katherine was excited in the weeks leading up to it. Seeing the pure joy and wonder on his daughter's face at the sight of the Christmas display in the store windows gave Freddy a strange sort of feeling inside: a fuzzy one in his chest, and for some reason that feeling made him walk right into the store and buy a dozen presents for her.

"Fred! You're _spoiling_ her!" Loretta insisted, rolling her eyes as Freddy asked for help shifting an enormous doll's house into the front room. "We can't afford this!"

"Oh, come on, Loretta – it's Christmas!" said Freddy, with a jovial grin, snowflakes in his eyelashes and his face aching with the cold, gloved hands clenching the corners of the enormous cardboard box. "She deserves a treat. Help me shift this, won't you?"

"Yeah, Mommy," said Katherine, as Loretta conceded, put down her tea towel, and helped her husband relocate the box to under the tree. "You and Daddy promised me I could have a doll's house for Christmas!"

"Not one this size!" Loretta protested weakly.

"I said she could have it," said Freddy, straightening up and cracking his back. "And I want the best for my little girl," he added, staring into Loretta's eyes. She stared back for a moment, and then looked away hastily.

"Well, you can't open it until Christmas morning," she muttered. "But it won't really be a surprise then, will it?"

As a child, Freddy had hated Christmas. He had never had a chance to properly take part in it. But in the past couple of years, he had really grown to adore it. In fact, it was the time of year he looked forward to the most, with the red and the green and the gold adorning everything, and the cartoon reindeers and likeness of fat Father Christmases peering at him from wherever he looked. He had previously found them slightly creepy, but Katherine's excitement about them was enough to make him reconsider. He loved the snow, fake or otherwise, and he loved the smell of cinnamon that hung in the air, along with the hot chocolate and the mince pies and the promises of roast turkey. And the tinsel. He didn't even mind the tinsel getting into his shoes and down his neck, though it itched, and he didn't even mind the shitty presents. Not when they were from Katherine, anyhow.

"What's this?" he asked, with mock surprise on Christmas morning, pulling a package wrapped in blue paper from under the tree. "'To Daddy'... Now, who could that be for, I wonder?" he teased. Katherine giggled.

"It's for you, silly!"

"Oh, right!" said Freddy, and smacked his forehead. "Silly old Daddy... I guess this is from you?" Katherine nodded, clenching her little hands into fists with anticipation.

"She picked it out herself," said Loretta, who was sitting next to him, still in her nightgown, as was their Christmas tradition. They never put on their day clothes until the presents had all been opened – because it was Christmas, and a time to relax a little, and a time to mess about and just enjoy the family.

"Well, then, let's see what it is, shall we?" said Freddy, and he tore away the paper. Something bulky and red and green tumbled to the floor, and Freddy picked it up. It was a woollen sweater, soft and stripy, and Katherine grinned at him.

"Everyone needs a Christmas sweater!" she chirped.

Freddy laughed. "Right! What's Christmas without a sweater, huh, princess?"

"You gonna try it on?"

"Just try and stop me," said Freddy, and he pulled it over his head. It wasn't a bad fit, and it was soft as lamb's wool and all the more special because his daughter had chosen it. He would have hated it, to be honest – he didn't really go for the whole coloured stripes thing, but if Katherine wanted him to wear it, then wear it he would. "I love it! I'm going to wear it every day, even when it's not the holidays any more, even if I just need a bit of cheering up. I'm going to wear it and I'm going to think of you, sweetheart, and then I won't feel down any more." He pulled Katherine close to him and pecked her on the cheek. "Thank you, darling."

"No problem, Daddy! When are we going to have dinner, huh?"

"You only want Christmas dinner because it means you get to eat chocolate afterwards," said Loretta with a laugh. "And you'll have it when Mommy gets the turkey good and ready."

"Your mom's working hard to get that turkey ready, too," said Freddy. "Why don't we go and play with the doll's house and get out of her way?"

"Okay!" said Katherine, with a grin that stretched from ear to ear, and she scampered off to prepare the dolls. Freddy and Loretta grinned at each other – it was turning out to be the perfect day. And later, it even started to snow. They had a wonderful Christmas, just the three of them, snuggled up by the fire and watching the snow fall late into the night, drowsy from too much food and, in Freddy's case, a little too much brandy. But it was wonderful, and for once, Freddy didn't even think about the other kids.

It wasn't until the New Year, in fact, that he started to itch with the desire to kill again. He hadn't been planning to go out and do it, though he knew he wouldn't be able to hold off forever – it would happen when it happened. But he was pushed to the breaking point on the second morning of January by Loretta. _Good Lord_, that woman would just not stop _bitching_.


	14. Don't Talk To Strangers

**part xiv: don't talk to strangers**

* * *

The house was untidy, with bits and pieces of Christmas wrapping and boxes and part discarded from presents littering the floor. Freddy found several shiny chocolate wrappers wedged in between the cushions of the couch. A paper crown sat proudly on the top of the toilet tank, much to the general bafflement of the Krueger family, none of whom could recall putting it there. When he got up on that morning, Loretta was sweeping the kitchen floor, a frown on her face and a pile of trash next to her feet.

"Good morning, Fred," she said, wiping her brow as Freddy went to the kitchen counter to make himself a cup of coffee.

"Good morning, Loretta. There's a huge mess in the front room, if that's what you're working on."

Loretta straightened up and gave him an indignant stare. "Excuse me?"

"I found candy wrappers between the cushions. Someone has to clean it."

Loretta raised her eyebrows, and laughed in disbelief. "Well, Fred, it seems to me that someone else in this kitchen has a lot more time on their hands than I do, and seems a lot more concerned about discarded candy wrappers than I am right now. So if you would just take yourself into the front room, I'm sure there would be no-one there to stop you clearing it up yourself. And take that sweater off, you look ridiculous."

Freddy had been fully intending to roll his eyes and bear it until she'd mentioned the sweater. How _dare_ she? She knew it was a gift from Katherine; she knew Katherine had picked it out specially, and she knew how much it meant to Freddy.

"_What_ did you say?" he hissed, turning from the counter and grabbing the woman by her neck, fingertips squeezing into the back of her shoulder.

"I—I," she spluttered. "I didn't say—I didn't mean—"

"You'd better not have," said Freddy and he loosened his grip on her just as Katherine walked into the room, rubbing her eyes, heavy from sleep.

"Mornin'," she mumbled.

"Good morning, sweetheart," said Freddy, stroking Loretta's neck gently with his thumb. "How are you today?" He felt Loretta swallow and tremble underneath his grip.

"I'm good," said Katherine. "Mommy, what's for breakfast?"

"Wh-whatever you want, Katherine," said Loretta, and she gave Freddy a horrified look before turning from him, to see what was in the cupboards. "I'll just see what there is."

"And I'll go and get the morning newspaper," said Freddy, to no-one in particular, and smiled banally at the wall.

"Mommy?" said Katherine, peering around the table at her mother, who was breathing harshly, but not quite crying, and taking a long time to retrieve the cereal. "Is anything wrong?"

"No, no, of course not," said Loretta, straightening up with a box in her hand. "Mommy's just... still a little sleepy, that's all." She gave Katherine a small smile, and Katherine smiled back.

"All right," said Freddy, "I'm heading into town. Anything you want, Kathy?"

"Nope!" she said brightly, seeming to have forgotten already about her mother's upset, and Freddy laughed and ruffled her hair.

"'Kay, I'll see you later, honey. Oh, and Loretta?"

"Yes?" she said stiffly.

"Don't tell."

All the journey into town, his hands were shaking as they clutched the steering wheel of the car. What sort of wife spoke to her husband like that? What sort of mother spoke like that about her daughter's efforts? There was a red-hot rage burning in front of Freddy's eyes, and it made it almost difficult to see clearly. Several cars honked at him for his poor driving, swerving slightly onto their side of the road, and he scowled, gave them the finger, and drew a shaky breath and tried to concentrate as he finished the drive to the store.

He bought a couple of magazines, and gave a tight-lipped smile to the teenage cashier who raised an eyebrow at him. "Nice sweater."

"It was a Christmas gift from my daughter," he growled, not trusting himself not to snap at her. She was blonde and busty, and he probably would have spent longer looking at her if he wasn't so angry. But as it was, he was certain that if he stayed with her for a moment longer, he would lash out, and he would hurt her, maybe even kill her – without the use of his razor – and that would be very difficult indeed to hide.

He took the papers and he left the shop, dumping them into the passenger seat of his car. And then he took several deep breaths and calmed himself, and drove. He did not know where he was driving to – he thought perhaps he would drive around the town a couple of times, despite the icy roads, and try to clear his head. That was the plan. But then, not everything Freddy did went according to plan.

On a stretch of long, straight road, after the houses had ended and there was just the frosty grass of a park on the sides, Freddy saw a young girl walking. She looked no older than six or seven, and she was wearing a dark coat and had her head hanging in front of her and her hands in her pockets, as though she was crying – crying and walking at the same time. Freddy wondered where she could possibly be going – she was so young, and it was so cold outside, and there was nobody else around.

He slowed the car and rolled down his window. The girl, who was coming towards him, stopped in surprise when she realised he was watching her.

"Hello, there," he said. "How are you doing?"

She blinked at him, as though she didn't know quite what to say. Perhaps her parents had told her never to talk to strangers. Good advice. Freddy didn't recognise her.

"It just seems a little odd to see a young girl like you all alone in the streets, especially in this weather. Are you all right? Do you need a lift home?"

"My—my Mom told me not to talk to strangers," said the girl quietly.

"Ohh," said Freddy. So that _was_ the problem. "Well, in that case, I'm Freddy Krueger, and it's awfully nice to meet you." He stuck his hand out of the window, and the girl smiled a little, but she didn't move to take it. "Are you lost?" asked Freddy.

"No," said the girl. "I'm running away."

"Running away?" Freddy tilted his head. "From what?"

"From _Grandma_," said the girl, and shuddered.

"Aw, what's wrong with Grandma?" asked Freddy.

"I hate her," said the girl.

"She can't be that bad?" said Freddy diplomatically.

"She told me I looked ugly in my new dress, and – and she's always being mean to my Mom. She smells of vegetables and she hates children." The girl pouted. "She says so. _I_ hate _her_, too."

"Oh." A smile played about Freddy's lips. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I _love_ children. Especially... little girls. I have one of my own. Katherine. She's a little younger than you." _And infinitely more wonderful, you ungrateful little shit_, he added in his head.

"Oh," said the girl.

"Your mom is probably very worried about you," said Freddy. "Let me give you a ride home."

The girl dithered, and sighed. "Oh-_kay_... But only because my mom might be worried, not because of Grandma."

"Gotcha." Freddy winked, and the girl grinned at him, and she opened the passenger's door and climbed in. Freddy moved the newspapers for her, slamming them away inside the glove box. Then he turned and started up the car, as the girl pulled her seat belt on. "So, what's your name?" asked Freddy, turning back into the road.

"Alexandria," she said, wrinkling her nose. "But you can just call me Alex. I like it better."

"I bet your Grandma calls you Alexandria, huh?" asked Freddy.

"Yep," said Alex, and slumped back in the seat with her arms crossed. Her hair was wet and bedraggled from the snow, and her face was pale and drawn. "I bet your Grandma calls you 'Frederick'."

"I don't have a grandma," said Freddy.

"Oh," said Alex. "You're lucky."

They didn't say anything more until they had been driving for about ten minutes, and the houses began to crop up once again as they got closer to the town.

"There's my turn off," said Alex, sitting up straight and pressing a finger against the glass, pointing to the left. "You can go in there to get to my house." Freddy ignored her. "Hey, uh, Freddy? Mr Krueger, sir? The turn off for my house is just over there."

"I know a quicker way," said Freddy.

"Oh," said Alex, and she sat back in her seat, and was quiet for a couple more minutes, and played with her seat belt, before she looked up at him in confusion. "But you don't know where I live."

"Aw, details," said Freddy.

"Where are you taking me?" asked Alex, and Freddy could hear the fear rising in her voice. "I don't know this part of town."

"That's all right," said Freddy. "You don't need to. _I_ know it. And, look, we're almost here."

"Almost where?" asked Alex, as he stopped the car outside the power plant.

"This is where I work," said Freddy, and he winked at her before shutting off the engine, unbuckling his seat belt, getting out and going around to her side of the car. She seemed to be stuck half way between deciding if she'd be able to outrun him or not, but unfortunately for her, she hadn't even tried. Freddy grabbed her by the arm and dragged her from the car, slamming the door shut, and taking her to the boiler room.

"What is this place?" gasped Alex, as Freddy bolted the door shut and let go of her, walking across to his tool desk and pulling out his old razor.

"This is the boiler room," said Freddy. "This is where I do my work. My – ah – special work."

"Special?" said Alex. "What's that?" she asked, her voice trembling as Freddy held up the razor and it glinted in the fire light. "Is that a razor? What do you do with that? Do you hurt people?"

"Yes," said Freddy. "But don't worry – they're only flesh wounds."

"W-what's that?" asked Alex, as Freddy came closer to her. Freddy hoped to God she wouldn't run – she seemed smart enough to, and he still felt sluggish from the Christmas feeding – but she seemed to be too preoccupied with staring at the razor blade to. The light was dancing on it, and, Freddy had to admit, it was a little hypnotic.

"It means you don't really get hurt very much. It means I'm just going to cut your skin—" Alex whimpered. "Well," whispered Freddy, drawing close to her and kneeling down, "it will hurt a little. I'm going to draw blood. A lot of blood. But it won't hurt as much as it hurt the last kid, because I've sharpened the razor now. It'll be quick, and you'll hardly even feel it." A noise, like a whine or a gasp, escaped from Alex's throat, and she went to bolt from him, but Freddy slammed a hand on the wall next to her. "Scared?" he asked. Alex nodded, tears welling in her eyes. "That's all right," said Freddy. "You should be. Let me tell you something, Alex, sweetie," he said, and leant closer conspiratorially. "When your mom told you not to talk to strangers, you should have listened." He gave her a quick kiss then – a goodbye kiss – his lips closing over hers and his tongue flicking out, and her screams were muffled as he began to slice at her chest.

He felt a wonderful sense of relief when she collapsed, this one. All his anger just seemed to vanish, and there had been a pounding in his head before, which eased, and he felt considerably happier, his mood lifted enormously. What had he been angry about, again? Oh, yes, that stupid bitch back home. Well, she didn't matter. She was always going to be like that. As long as he could find some way to make things better, thought Freddy, as he opened the boiler and tipped the body inside, well, things just weren't so bad.

He hadn't known this girl's real name – not her surname anyway – but he was sure he'd recognise her picture when it was published in the paper, alongside the names of the others who'd 'disappeared'. She was one of his children now, and he would have to honour her in death. Perhaps he should keep a record of the children he took... Yes, that would help him remember, and that would help him make sense of it all, and when he felt stressed, he could look at them, and that would help, yes...

Cleaning his hands on a dirty rag on his table and making sure his sweater wasn't stained, he slipped back out of the boiler room and made his way to the car. He fumbled in the glove box for the papers that were still there. And he shifted inside, pulling the door shut and desperately leafing through them. He needed to find the stories about them, find them before he forgot—

There she was. Annie. "Young girl still missing," read the headline. Well, she would be for a long time to come. "Police fear disappearance of a seven year old boy may be related." Oh, it certainly was, thought Freddy. He licked his thumb and tore the article out of its page with the utmost care, then folded it and slipped it into his pants pocket. His children. Their last moment, their memories, their _lives_ – they belonged to him now.

And then he remembered his other child, his darling Katherine, waiting at home for his return. And Loretta would be suspicious; she would wander what had taken him so long.

Slowly, reluctantly, he got out of the car and went around to the driver's side. He would have to hide this scrap of paper from his family, but he knew he'd take it to read through more thoroughly later. He chuckled to himself as he started up the car.

* * *

Reviews are always appreciated! :)


	15. Workmanship

**part xv: workmanship**

* * *

Katherine and her mother were in the kitchen when he arrived home. They didn't hear him come in, and he didn't mind – he wanted somewhere to but the newspaper scrap before he greeted them. He didn't want it falling from his pocket at come inconvenient time, and that seemed like just the sort of thing to happen. Or perhaps he would accidentally get so wrapped up in playing with Katherine that he'd forget about it altogether, and his wife would go snooping around in his pockets when she was doing the laundry. Freddy wasn't going to have _that_.

He crept down the hallway, listening to Loretta's voice behind the door, and Katherine's innocent, clueless answers. He could almost picture her wide eyed stare of amazement, and it made him smile a little.

"And now you have to knead the dough—"

"_Need_ it? But we needed it all along, didn't we?"

"Yes, Katherine, but I mean with your hands..."

Now, where could he put this where he didn't run the risk of it being discovered? It wasn't incriminating evidence in itself, but Loretta could ask questions. And when she got an idea into her head, the woman wouldn't let it go. Not until Freddy made her let it go. And even then he knew it would still be there, even if she never said anything, even if she was too cowardly to say or do anything. And she would likely find it dreadfully suspicious that her husband was keeping track of the recent child disappearances. Sure, he could pass it off as concern for Katherine's well being, but he knew that was a flimsy excuse and for that matter, if she discovered it between the pages of a book or something she would know he was hiding it from her. Where could he put it that she wouldn't be apt to look? She cleaned every inch of the house – if not very well sometimes. Except for the basement.

Except for the basement. Freddy's lips curled into a smile, and it wasn't because of Katherine any more. He had almost forgotten about her as he padded softly along the hallway, hands reaching in front of him for the doorknob. It hadn't been touched in years, and it squeaked, and Freddy hesitated.

It hadn't been touched in years because Freddy hated the basement, and Freddy didn't want anyone to go in there. But that was because it made the memories come back, the memories of Mr Underwood and the memories of pain and death – but those _were_ just memories, after all, and Freddy had since learned to enjoy such memories.

He turned the knob slowly and wandered inside. He stood at the top of the steps for a moment and gazed down at the darkness below. He could just make out the shelves silhouetted against the dim daylight from the dusty window, and a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling. He took a breath – because he felt like this should be something momentous, even if the basement didn't scare him any more – and he started on his way down.

He ran his fingers over the shelves, and they came away stained with the scrapings from the inch of dust that covered them. Rusty paint cans, spanners, cardboard boxes destroyed by mould festered in the corners. And there – over there by the piping that led to the central heating – was where he had kept his razor, for all those years when he'd been away from it. Just to think, there had been all those years when he'd forgotten about the razor, and how much a part of him it was, and how much it meant to him and how much he needed it.

Because he did need it. He needed it now like he needed food or air or water. It was his release, and it didn't cause the pain any more but it took it away. But it was getting old, and he knew, despite the fact that it had worked on little Alex, that he'd need a new one eventually. And better sooner rather than later. But he couldn't use any old razor. That wouldn't have the same effect. He'd need something that was as much a part of him as that one had been. Something with a personal touch. These were his children, after all, and they deserved only the best...

He smirked, but then he heard the kitchen door open. Quickly, he opened an old paint can and shoved the newspaper clipping inside. He would come back for it later, in the dead of night, when Loretta was asleep (and she slept deeply), and he would make sure he preserved it well. He would make sure he got a hold of the others, too – because there would be others.

He snapped the paint can shut and hurried up the steps, closing the door softly behind him and stepping into the front room. He could still hear Loretta's voice coming from the kitchen – mercifully, she must have decided to return and scold Katherine about something. Freddy flopped onto the sofa, slung his feet up and closed his eyes. He remained like that for a moment more before he heard small, soft footsteps, and a crunching sound.

"Daddy! You're home!"

He opened his eyes and pretended to peer at his daughter blearily. "Kathy? How're you doing, baby?"

Loretta appeared in the doorway and leant against it as Freddy sat up, grabbing hold of his daughter about the waist and slinging her onto his knees. Katherine giggled, grabbing hold of his sweater. "Why didn't you tell me you'd arrived home, Fred?"

"Yeah, Daddy," piped up Katherine. "Why didn't you say you were home? You could have helped us bake cookies!"

"Cookies?!" Freddy gasped in mock surprise. "Well, now, darling, I must admit I _did_ smell something delicious as I came in. You and Mommy sounded like you were having so much fun that I didn't want to disturb you. But if I'd known it was _cookies_..." He nuzzled her stomach, and she giggled, swatting at him with her little hands.

"Still," said Loretta, disapprovingly, he thought, "you could have let me know you were home."

"Well, I was tired, all right?" snapped Freddy. "Am I not allowed to have a moment to myself – or is that too much to ask?"

"No, of course not," said Loretta, with something akin to a sigh. "I'm sorry."

"That's all right," said Freddy. "We forgive you. Do we forgive Mommy, Katherine?" Katherine nodded, and Freddy mirrored her. "Yep. We forgive you, Mommy."

"Hmm," said Loretta, and disappeared without saying anything further.

"So," said Freddy, "you wanna show me what new stories you've come up with for your dolls?"

"Yep!" grinned Katherine, and hopped down from his lap, scampering across the room and grabbing hold of the little wooden people who lived in the doll's house. "This is Lawrence," she said of a tall, blue-clad male figure. "And he's the uncle."

"I thought he was the grandpa yesterday?" asked Freddy.

"Well, I've changed my mind," said Katherine, matter-of-factly, and Freddy gave a chuckle.

Not only was Katherine the one person who seemed to adore him unconditionally, she was the most adorable child Freddy had ever set eyes on. He could only count himself lucky that she was truly his and not some other kid being raised by some other parent who didn't realise how wonderful she was. She was so artistic and intelligent, so imaginative and intuitive...

Perhaps, he thought, in a small way, he had done something right and good in his life, something for someone else. He was good to Katherine, and – though he knew, he could sense – that he was about to embark on a journey that some would have considered pure evil, selfish, and sick, he just had to think about Katherine and how the world was a much better place for him bringing her into it, and that erased the evil. Katherine wouldn't have turned out as marvellous as she had if she had been raised alone by Loretta, he was sure of it. Loretta had her moments, and she could be good and kind, but she was silly and couldn't see beyond her own nose and her small town ways.

His love for his daughter did not stop him sneaking into the basement at night, though, and taking out the photographs of the children he had so far killed. It didn't stop him standing alone with a flashlight and staring. It didn't stop him pressing it to his lips and thinking of _his_ children, and remembering. And it didn't stop him thinking about how there would soon be another story to come. And it didn't stop the clenching feeling in his stomach when he thought that it wouldn't be long before he could kill again.

But he needed a replacement razor. Something new and fresh before he wore the old one out, so that he could keep it safe and it could grow old gracefully. It was already coated with rust, and although it had done the job, Freddy would prefer his work to be smoother.

So he got to doing a little handiwork. It wasn't hard. He had all his skills from doing odd jobs around the high school, mending boilers and doing manual work. And he had access to materials – there were always tools about at the power plant.

Before he could make whatever it was that was in the back of his mind, he needed a place to do it. He couldn't at work. There were people going in and out of the boiler room at odd times – and Loretta would think it was suspicious if he stayed at work until all hours. So he'd have to do it at home. He'd be able to work nights there, too, as the mood struck him. Sometimes he had terrible nightmares, about things he remembered and about things he thought could be; nightmares about blood and bruises and screaming, and when he awoke from them, it more often than not inspired him. There was no doubt that his thoughts ran darkly, more so nowadays than ever – though nowadays his dark thoughts were balanced with those of his daughter. But, still, the love did not negate the anger and when he sat awake, alone in the darkness, he sometimes wanted to do awfully violent things.

So in order to work at home, he needed a room. He needed a space that was his and only his, one that Loretta wouldn't go poking around in. She would become suspicious if he was in the basement all the time, and she'd want to bring him coffee and he didn't think he could stand that. Besides, the basement had windows; it wouldn't be practical. But if he could just erect a wall midway...

He got to measuring dimensions, cutting wood and affixing it to the bricks. He didn't mind being down in the basement any more – in fact, he rather liked it. It got him in the mood. Even when he was crouching with a bunch of nails in his mouth, up to his knees in sawdust and humming _Love Me Do_, smiling crookedly at Katherine when she peered down the steps and being just like a normal dad, he was still thinking about the finished product. The place where he'd be able to work in peace, where he could just be alone and let it all out and not have to worry about anyone finding out what he had done.

"It's going to be my special room," he told Loretta, in response to her question on morning, pecking her on the cheek and buttering some toast. "I'm going to be doing a lot of work in there. Handiwork. Construction. I don't want you going in there."

"What sort of construction?" asked Loretta warily.

"Oh, you know," said Freddy. "That'll be my little surprise." And he winked at Katherine, who giggled.

And he did stay true to his word. He set up a table down there, and he did build a rocking horse for Katherine. She was thrilled with it, and Loretta didn't seem annoyed at the increasing amounts of time he was spending down there. In fact, she seemed rather pleased, and Freddy heard her boasting to one of the mothers from down the road about how he was such a good husband. He could only hope that she didn't start hiring him out to do odd jobs for the neighbours; he wasn't some kind of rocking horse prostitute. He told Loretta this one evening as they sat watching television.

"Oh, Fred, don't be silly," she said, trying to suppress a giggle. "And don't say that in front of Katherine."

"What? She's too busy watching TV to notice," said Freddy, and indeed, she was sitting on the floor in front of them, chin propped up on her shoulders and staring captivated at the screen. "Bet she wouldn't notice no matter what we did." And he lifted his arm around Loretta's shoulders, and pulled her closer to him.

"Fred," she giggled, as he kissed her. "What are you doing?"

Freddy shrugged. "I'm just enjoying spending the evening with my wife; I'm allowed to do that, aren't I?" he asked her, stroking the side of her face with one finger while gazing into her eyes. It usually worked, and Freddy did sometimes enjoy the evenings with her – when she wasn't getting in his way.

"Yes, but..." Loretta tilted her head in the direction of Katherine.

"So what?" asked Freddy, screwing up his face, and Loretta laughed.

His relationship with her was almost better now that he had his special room. As long as she stayed out of his business, they were fine. As long as she didn't get in his way, they were fine. As long as she was doing what he wanted, they were fine. And she was, now. And he was happy, toiling away in his own space – his own space, for the first time since he'd married her – and they were fine.

He'd spent hours contemplating what he should do with his razor, and one day, driving home, he knew, finally, what he wanted to do to create something that was as much him as the old one had been. As he sat at a junction, waiting to turn left, he saw a cat clawing at a tree. It was a tabby, he remembered. And for a moment, he was a child again. Memories, hazy ones, came back in a flood – of a tiny little kitten he'd found, barely alive – a kitten that had sliced up the insides of his arms and left red rivers there. A kitten whose claws had given him nightmares for months. He chuckled darkly to himself, and then gave the driver behind him the finger when he was honked at for taking too long to turn.

He stopped at a fishing store on the way home and bought a box of hooks. And he dug about in the trunk of his car for a workman's glove that had gotten buried there weeks ago. He smirked as he slid them into his jacket and hid them there. It would be perfect.

Loretta didn't question him when he went to his room, and she didn't come to disturb him. She didn't usually try – not that she could have done anything anyway. The door was always kept padlocked. He said it was because he was concentrating.

He skipped dinner that evening ("I'm working, _honey_...") to affix the hooks. It took a lot of poking and a lot of wiggling and a lot of tearing and stitching to get them to stay put. But they looked like cat's claws, and, though Freddy was sure they were quite useless, he knew that he would be able to weld them on and make them stay tomorrow, when he had access to the heat and metal of the boiler room. For now, though... Well, now they were just nice to look at. Or perhaps nice wasn't the right word. They were beautiful. They were a manifestation of Freddy's longing and hate and anger and passion. And they were, literally, to his younger self at least, nightmare inducing. And as Freddy stared at them, he smiled.

* * *

More regular updates when I learn to organise my time and not leave myself three essays to write in one night! Oh dear.


	16. Prototype

**part xvi: prototype**

* * *

He slipped the glove into his work bag later, and hummed to himself as he tucked Katherine into bed. Tomorrow would be a good day, he could feel it. He didn't know what he was going to do, but he knew he'd enjoy it.

He stayed after work for a couple of extra hours, telling the people in charge he was making sure the boilers were in fine working order. In fact, he was cutting metal sheets, bolting them through the glove and making it _perfect_. When he was finished, he held it up and it glinted in the light. Yes. It was wonderful. He'd cut pipes and welded the hooks onto the end; affixed the hooks to the end of the pipes. They worked as fingers, and were bolted and screwed tightly onto a metal plate the covered the back of his hand. And when he was finished, Freddy slipped the glove on, and flexed his finger in the fire light. The hooks were like nails, like claws – like the cat's, but much, much more deadly. Freddy grinned, and slipped the glove off, hiding under his other tools. It wouldn't be long before he was back for it.

He pulled on an overcoat, one with a high collar to guard against the still-chilly, biting winter winds, and put on a hat. It threw his face into shadow and he was glad of that. He was planning on heading into town – to a run down street near the power plant. He had been keeping an eye on it for a few months now, and he knew that in the evenings the kids often played outside alone. There was a junkyard nearby, and the remains of an old warehouse that they liked to play in. Mostly they didn't go down there; they weren't really allowed, Freddy knew. He certainly wouldn't have let Katherine go anywhere near the place. But once in a while there was a kid who thought they were big enough and brave enough and bad enough to explore it. He knew, because he'd been watching. And he would take that kid when they'd gone in alone – because they always ending up going in alone – and then he'd be able to try out his invention.

He smirked, got in the car, and drove. It wasn't very far. He'd need to find a better way to do this, he knew – to hone his skills. He'd need to find a way to get the kids alone without attracting suspicion. Sure, he was doing all right now, but eventually people would start to notice. Maybe he should get a job as an ice cream truck driver, or something... Or a bottle of chloroform... He stopped the car round the back of the warehouse – he could see in through the back window – and waited. In his bag he had prepared sandwiches and a flask of coffee. He contemplated briefly whether he was sick (he came to the conclusion that he was, but oh well) and began to nibble at the crusts.

After a while he heard a clatter from inside the building, and a couple of kids jeering far away. That meant one of them was going in. The others were too cowardly; they'd be standing around outside and waiting so that they didn't get in trouble with their parents. Freddy got out of the car, shivered in the cold air, and made his way to the warehouse. The back door was rusty and it stuck, squeaking when he pulled it open, but not so much that it would have attracted attention from the other side.

The inside was spacious, cold, dark and echo-y. There were crates lines up against the walls, marked with labels for some long forgotten delivery. The windows were high in the walls, and most of them were broken. Freddy had a few moments to stand by himself, well aware of how creepy this place was, before the door nearest the street opened, and a small figure slipped inside.

Freddy drew behind the crates, not wanting to scare the kid off. Slowly, with great hesitation, they wandered forward, and Freddy saw that it was a little girl. Perfect. Just perfect. He crept along, pressed close to the wall, the sound of her footsteps and quivering breath along with his own the only things he could hear. And then, when she got into the middle of the room, and stood alone in the moonlight, looking at the ceiling and clutching herself and looking as though she had no idea what to do next, Freddy emerged from his hiding place.

The girl almost screamed, but she got a hold of herself quickly.

"What are you doing here?" she asked petulantly. "I was told it was abandoned."

Freddy scowled. The kids in this neighbourhood sure had a bad attitude. "I'm the janitor," he said, advancing. "Name's Freddy. And you are?"

"Johanna," said the girl. "Do you live here?"

"No," said Freddy, and stopped when he was standing next to her and looking down at her. She was quite pretty, if it wasn't for the face she had like she'd swallowed a lemon. She had dark, shiny hair, and big, brown eyes. "I just keep it clean. But you really shouldn't be here, you know."

"You're not doing a very good job of keeping it clean," said Johanna. "It's dirty."

"It's a big place," said Freddy, "and I'm only one man. But you shouldn't be here."

"Well, they said I wouldn't have the guts. They said I was chicken. Because I'm a girl." Johanna snorted and crossed her arms. "I showed them."

"Sure you did," said Freddy, "but you know you're not allowed here, right?"

"Yeah, I guess." Johanna scuffed the ground with her shoe. "You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"Hm," said Freddy, pretending to think about it. "Nah, I won't. And I'll do even better – I'll take you to see another awesome building, how about that?"

"Really?" Johanna's eyes lit up. "But what about the guys out there?"

"Pssh." Freddy waved a hand. "They were too chicken to come in here in the first place. Come on. Come with me." He turned and jerked his head towards the back door, and began to head towards the car. Johanna followed. Just as he'd thought. The kids here were so cocky, they didn't even stop to think about the consequences of their actions. Stupid fuckers.

"Buckle up," he said, helping her clamber into the passenger's side. "Don't want you getting hurt, now, do we?" And he laughed.

They drove to the power plant, where Freddy stopped the car and raised his eyebrows at Johanna, who was peering out excitedly. "I know this place," she said. "It's where they make all the electricity, right?"

"Right," said Freddy. "Now, the place I'm going to show you is called the boiler room. It's a very special room – and it's warm in there, too – that'll be nice, won't it?"

"You betcha," said Johanna, who was shivering in the cold evening air. Freddy smiled at her and led her there, and, as always, locked the door behind them.

"What do you think?" he asked, making his way over to his table, and finding his glove. His heart gave a little leap as he slipped his hand into it, then turned to face the little girl, keeping it hidden behind his back.

"_Wow_," said Johanna, who didn't appear to have noticed anything wrong. She was wondering around, staring wide eyed at all the metal and equipment. "Do you live _here_?"

"No," said Freddy. "Don't be stupid, bitch, I live in a normal house."

"Huh?" said Johanna, distracted by his change of tone, and she turned to look at him in confusion. And as she did, Freddy came at her with the glove. He was too excited; he didn't even have the time to taunt her with it first. But that didn't matter, because as soon as the hooks hit her skin he knew it was torture.

Perhaps it was _too_ torturous – he enjoyed the screaming, yes, but she seemed to take an age to die. He slashed at her with the hooks and she fell, stumbling backwards and hitting the boiler tank, howling as her back burned. Then Freddy was on top of her, grabbing at her gut and wrenching, pulling, tearing her insides out. That wasn't enough to kill her straight away, but it was too messy to leave, and he had to go for her throat after that. He had to dig in repeatedly, the hooks getting caught on torn skin that bunched together, shedding blood across the boiler room floor (it was only lucky everything was red and brown anyway). Eventually she took a last, shuddering breath, and then dropped dead, and Freddy stood back and looked at what he had done.

It wasn't neat and it wasn't clean – he couldn't pretend it was. It had been fun, yes – but also difficult for him to hold her in place as she writhed and squirmed. Perhaps fish hooks weren't the best tools for the job. Perhaps he needed something smoother, longer... He took off the glove and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, disposed of the body, and went home for the night.

"You didn't tell me you were working late," Loretta accused him, as he sat at the table waiting for his dinner to be brought to him.

"I'm sorry," said Freddy. "Something came up."

"Hmph," said Loretta. "Katherine's been waiting for you. She's been asking where you were."

"Didn't you tell her I was probably still at work?"

"I didn't know, did I? You could have been anywhere."

"I was mending a boiler."

"Yes, well," said Loretta. "Just give me a warning from now on, all right? I don't want your meatloaf getting cold." And she pecked him on the cheek and they sat down together for a nice, normal, family dinner.

When Freddy scanned the papers later in the week, he found several articles – detailing the disappearances of the children he had disposed of, and several others linking them. He smirked. Perhaps he was becoming famous. He liked that. Under the light of his lamp, he carefully snipped the articles from their papers and pressed them into the pages of his scrapbook. He was making sure to keep a note of every article on him, and on his children. It made everything make more sense, somehow.

At work, he began attempting to refine his prototype of a murder weapon. He wondered, as he sweated under the heat and hammered the metal into shape, if he was a genius. Quite possibly. He attached broken razor blades to one glove, full length straight razors to another, nails to another, and another, and another. And his old razor sat at the edge of his desk at home, and he stroked it as he pored over his newspapers and drank the coffee his wife had made him. Occasionally, he whittled little wooden toys for Katherine. He had always been good at whittling – living alone for years had taught him pointless skills – but he had never told Loretta. And now she believed he spent hours in the basement practising. He started off making them rather lumpy and unrefined – he would need to show some measure of improvement to be believable, after all.

It didn't make sense for Loretta not to go in the basement at all any more, so he allowed her in there now. He just didn't let her go near his special room. He couldn't abide the distraction, he said – it was best if she only used the basement for storage, and for a shortcut to the back yard on hot summer's days.

He must have made two dozen gloves before he hit upon the perfect attachment. He hadn't killed any children with them, only small animals – he didn't see the sense in wasting a child's life like that. When he killed his children, he wanted it to be special. It had to make sense, and it had to be remembered – that was the least a child deserved. So he tempted stray cats and such into his work place with scraps from his lunch, and he killed them. And he scooped bits of their innards into jars, to see how each different claw affected them. It helped him decide what sort he'd go for next. One by one he brought them home in his work bag, heading straight to his special room where he knew they would not be found. Soon the walls were adorned with bladed, hooked and clawed gloves, the shelves filled with jars of animal entrails. And then he found what he was looking for.

It was some sort of steak knife, and he'd found it quite by accident when he was browsing in some thrift store in town. It was long and bizarrely shaped, and Freddy fell in love on sight. He'd never seen anything like it. He picked it up and examined it, the way the light fell on it, the sharpness of its edge – and he knew he had to have it. He couldn't find another like it, though, so he bought it (innocently enough, he thought: he'd held a conversation with the cashier about the difficulties of carving a pork joint) and took it home, to his special room. There, he mapped it out, and he studied it, and he became obsessed with it. He needed to recreate it. It was the perfect knife.

Loretta grew increasingly obsessed with the children's disappearances, and Freddy had to keep reminding himself that that was only natural. It was good of her, to be worried for Katherine. What sort of mother would she be if she wasn't? It didn't mean she suspected him. But, still, he got a little edgy when she mentioned it, even if it did give him a pleasurable tingling sensation.

"...a little girl called Johanna from a neighbourhood across town. Oh, God, Fred, I'm terrified. Who knows where he's going to strike next?"

"Who?" asked Freddy.

"You know," said Loretta, and lowered her voice so as not to be overheard by Katherine, who was playing in the next room. "_Him_."

"Oh, you don't know it's him," said Freddy, munching on his toast. It was a beautiful morning, and he was looking forward to altering a bunch of steak knives he'd bought from various locations across the town (so as not to be suspected). He wanted them to be just like the one he'd found. "Maybe she's just run away. It's an awful neighbourhood."

"Oh, sure," said Loretta scornfully. "I'm sure she'll be right back in five minutes."

"Yeah, exactly," said Freddy. "_Gone fishin'_." And he laughed to himself.

It took a lot of concentration and wiping of sweat from his brow, and a lot of discarded blades, before Freddy discovered how to create the perfect knife. It was perhaps even better than the one he had found in the store. It was long and it was bent and it was sharp and it was beautiful, and when Freddy welded it to the piping and held up his handiwork for a better look, he knew he was onto something. He had made claws like that before, when he'd been trying to find the right way to do it – but they had never been so long before, never so sharp and brutal. It was at least six inches long, and as Freddy pictured it piercing flesh, he couldn't help but chuckle. This... would be fun.

He bent his finger, testing the joint. It was just loose enough that he could do what he wanted with it, like it was an extension of his fingernail. He snorted. The Man with Knives for Nails? Razor Fingers? He didn't know what the newspapers would begin to call him, but he knew it wouldn't be long before they realised that he – or someone like him – was behind it all. He knew, because he intended to use these claws _a lot_. And it wouldn't be long before someone noticed, before someone heard the slicing of the blades echoing the streets, before someone heard the screams or saw the shadow of his hand. He didn't think anyone would catch him, though. He was far too good at covering his tracks.

It wasn't long before he'd made the rest of the knives perfect, too, before he'd sharpened them to a point and attached them to discarded pipes and fixed those onto one of his old gloves. And then Freddy tried the glove on, and it fitted, and he realised that he had become the monster he'd been terrified of as a child. And he flexed his fingers and he could almost see the blood dripping from them, and then he sat down and had a cigarette.

The rest of his gloves were hanging up on the walls of his room at home, and he had a scrapbook that was filling up with stories about the children and speculation about who the killer was. Sometimes he read them at night when he couldn't sleep, and had a good laugh to himself about how wrong they were.

He bought some chloroform and he kept it stashed in his work bag, wrapped in an old rag that he'd used for cleaning the boiler, or polishing the door knobs... or something. His job was becoming less interesting to him now – though it had never exactly been fulfilling. But he had done it well in order to earn enough money to keep food on the table and his family happy. It was hard to concentrate now, though, when all he could think about was when he would be able to kill again.

* * *

I've been so busy I haven't updated in a while! Sorry!


	17. The Springwood Slasher

**part xvii: the springwood slasher**

* * *

He had been going to wait until the time was _right_ – until he'd found the right child to add next to his collection, until everything had fallen into place and it seemed as though their time had come. He didn't know when that would be, but he knew he would know when it happened, when it felt right, and he had started picking Katherine up from school – working later on alternate days and on weekends so that he would be free to do so. She had been thrilled about it, of course – there was nothing she loved more than seeing her daddy, and it made him happy to see her skipping towards him with her pigtails swinging and a huge grin on her face. But although he grabbed her tight and lifted her into a hug (a proper one, the sort only daddies could give and the sort Freddy had never had himself) and told her he was so pleased to see her and had she had a nice day, he couldn't help but keep an eye on the other kids, the ones without parents holding them tight. The kids who were starting to walk home alone. The kids whose parents were late. The kids who were loitering by the wall of the kindergarten and didn't seem to have anything in particular to do.

Little Jimmy Harris. His parents didn't seem to care for him much. But Freddy did, and could feel something building in his gut and he knew it wouldn't be long before it would feel right – everything would feel just right, and then he could take out his glove and then he could have some fun.

But he couldn't stop thinking about it and one evening he decided he didn't want to wait any longer. So what if everything was right or not? It didn't matter. All that mattered was that he could enjoy himself a little. Life was short – and even shorter for those kids who were stupid enough to come to him. He wouldn't bother playing the waiting game any longer. He would go out, right now, and find a kid, and he would make them his.

"Loretta, I have to go to work," he called, getting up from the couch and pulling on his boots. Loretta poked her head around the kitchen door. Her hair was a mess, pulled back loosely in a bun, and she was wearing an apron and holding some sort of weird kitchen utensil that Freddy knew nothing about.

"Now? But I've just put dinner on. It's your favourite!"

"I didn't know you needed _that_ to make my favourite," teased Freddy, flicking the thing she was holding, and she gave him a bemused look.

"Men."

"It's just a little something that needs tweaking at the power plant, honey – I'll be back in an hour."

"I hope you're getting paid for this, Fred – Katherine's talking about a trip to Disneyland next year."

"Disneyland?" Freddy gaped at her. Loretta laughed.

"Yes, so you make sure your boss isn't screwing you over, you hear?"

"Gotcha," said Freddy with a wince, and kissed her. "I'll be back by the time you've made that... whatever it is," he said, and then he picked up his work bag and he headed out the door.

He didn't have any plans in particular, so he decided to head to the place he'd first found a child – that little park just off of Elm Street. The sun was just beginning to go down and the kids were starting to head indoors for dinner, but there were one or two stragglers who were left behind, and it was them that Freddy was waiting for. He hid the bushes on the path at the back of the houses, and waited for one of them, who was alone, to come to him.

It must have been twenty minutes he stood there, the branches and the twigs prickling him in the face and the back, but it was worth it when he saw a little girl begin to head home alone. Excellent. He liked the little girls; they were more fun than the little boys.

He stayed quiet as she came closer to the bush, and then, as she crossed in front of it, he lurched forward and grabbed her, pulling her in. She screamed, and flailed, and Freddy fished the chloroform soaked rag out from where he'd been keeping it and pressed it to her mouth.

"Shh, shhh," he said, as she beat him with her little fists and tried to scream. "It's all right, it's all right. Relax. You're all right. I've got you. My name's Freddy, and I'm not going to hurt you." After a moment or two, the girl stopped struggling, and then her body went limp. "...Much."

Peering out to make sure that no-one was looking, he pulled the girl close to her and hurried to where he had hidden his car – across the park and behind a clump of trees. He laid her down in the back seat and covered her with a blanket. She had dark hair, and a pinched, pale face... He thought he may have recognised her – perhaps she was in first grade; she wasn't at kindergarten with Katherine. _Pamela_, a voice at the back of his mind said. Yes, that was it. Katherine played with her sometimes, and as far as Freddy knew she was a good girl.

He drove her to the power plant and hustled her to the boiler room. He could feel his heart beating at the back of his throat, and, rather ashamedly, he realised he might be about to throw up with his excitement. _Damn it_. He set the limp body down next to the wall, and then he took a seat, pulling his glove from his bag and flexing it. He wondered how long it would be before she woke up and he could get around to killing her. He jigged his leg up and down, twiddled his fingers, and examined his blades. Hmm. Perhaps he could just cut her a little bit while he waited.

He got down on all fours next to the unconscious girl and extended a long, curved finger. He trailed it along the side of her face, and her eyes didn't even flicker. His breath came out in a flutter. He flicked her, nicking her cheek, and there was a moment before a couple of droplets of blood rushed up to the surface of her skin. Freddy smiled, and licked his lips, and then pressed them to her cheek. Her blood tasted metallic and he didn't really like it but he had to kiss that better, didn't he?

He dragged the blades of his glove along her dress. Her sides were moving softly up and down, and the edges of the knives caught on the fabric and ripped it. Freddy looked at the torn fabric in annoyance and wiggled his hand free. He didn't care about the dress. He wanted to tear her fucking _skin_.

He ran his hands lower – along her legs, along the soft, pale skin there. It was untouched, unblemished – pure. Freddy smirked. Not for much longer. When she came around, she was going to be in a hell of a lot of pain.

And she was. Freddy sat in the chair next to his desk and he watched. The first thing she did when her eyes fluttered open was to whimper, and pull her fists to her face. That would be the headache from the chloroform. He could see her brow furrowing, trying to make sense of where she was as she sat up, groaning. She yelped, and stared down at her ripped and stained dress, wincing at the pain she must have realised she was feeling at the blood coming from between her legs.

"Hello, princess," said Freddy, holding up his bloodied claws by way of a greeting. The girl screamed.

Freddy stood up and advanced towards her, and she, panting, began to look around wildly for an escape. There was a gap between the boiler and the wall to her right, but Freddy was with her before she could make a move, almost on top of her, hands on the walls, blocking her in.

"Go away from me!" she cried, reaching out and slapping him with her open palm. Freddy flinched, and grabbed her wrist and twisted, making her gasp in fresh pain.

"And where do you think you'll go?" he asked softly, coming in closer to her, so that he could feel her breath on his cheek. She was covered in sweat and still struggling. "You're in my world now, bitch."

"You can't – you can't say that word," said the girl, her face screwed up as she writhed, trying to get away from him. "It's a bad word, my daddy says so, and he knows I'm here, and he'll come and find me—"

"No, he doesn't. No-one knows you're here – bitch." The girl choked out a sob. "I happen to _like_ that word. But my wife doesn't – I guess she's like your daddy. And you know how else she's like your daddy? She doesn't know I'm here, either. So screaming won't do you any good at all, little girl. But please keep on doing it. I like the sound."

He sat back and watched her. She seemed feisty, and feisty was always fun. There was no pleasure in killing then, really, if they were just going to lie down and take it. The girl stared at him for a moment, and then she realised he was no longer holding her in place – and as though she was attempting to defy him, or to test him, she screamed, loudly. And then she jumped up and ran as fast as those short and bleeding legs could carry her, scrabbling desperately with the hand rail as she scrambled up the stairs to the second level of the boiler room. Freddy watched her go, and he laughed. Then he stood up and followed her.

She was tripping over her own feet, panting hard, staring around in a frenzy, completely lost ever turn must have looked the same to her, and she kept ending up at the same junction as Freddy watched from the end of the metal pathway. And then he came forward, and she took another wrong turn and she ended up just in front of him, blood still seeping into her dress and tricking onto the floor. She seemed woozy, but she took in a breath, and again, she screamed.

Freddy chortled. "Like music," he said, and he made his way towards her, sliding his gloved hand along the metal railing so that the blades screeched, and the girl stopped, "to my ears." He was right in front of her then, and he bent down, and he held his hand out flat and he thrust it through her and she didn't even have enough energy left to scream.

Loretta was most displeased when he made it home late for dinner. "One hour, you said," she chided him, as he bent down to untie his boots in the hallway. "One hour, and you took an hour thirty minutes. Your dinner was going cold, and your daughter was going hungry."

Freddy, who had been humming to himself, looked up at her, and couldn't even bring himself to tell the dumb bitch to shut up. He was too contented. "Well, I hope you let her have an extra special big dessert," he said, and Katherine, who had been watching this from the doorway of the front room, giggled.

His family life was much better, warmer and more fulfilling, he noticed, when he felt happier with himself. And he felt happier with himself just after he'd killed. The glove served him well, and he enjoyed using it – it took away the awkwardness of having to wield a razor or a knife, and it was fun to think of it as a part of himself. His only issue with it was that the times he felt satisfied between each use of it began to get shorter and shorter. He found himself, just one or two days after each killing, itching to get out and do the same again. He kept finding excuses – the boiler room was going to pot, he told Loretta, and they needed all the manpower they had to fix it up. It wasn't untrue. It was almost obsolete as it was and was probably going to be shut down within the year.

Loretta nagged him about getting paid overtime, and he assured her that there was no problem, and that _of course_ Katherine would get her trip to Disneyland, and he wondered how the hell he would be able to afford that when the only payment he got from what he was doing was an immense sense of satisfaction.

The stories about the killings began to get more frequent, appearing in some form on the front of the newspapers almost every day. Freddy wasn't surprised. They were happening almost every day now – not if he could help it, but he couldn't. They were all his children, and they needed to be _taken care of_. Ugly little brats. And yet they were so pretty, too, and he couldn't help but look at their pictures – pictures he had found in the kindergarten, that the kids had brought in for projects, or pictures that he found in the newspapers of them looking so fresh and young and innocent – and he loved and hated them all at once.

But the stories about the _killer_ began to get more frequent, too, and they began to get more accurate, and Freddy wasn't sure whether he should feel glorified or threatened. It occurred to him at one point that he should stop, and he did for a while, but he couldn't control himself, he couldn't control those urges. Freddy was good at hiding things, but his life became a haze of blood and teddy bears and blades, and he realised that he was being more than a little careless.

He wanted to get the children as fast as he could, but sometimes that meant that they weren't quite alone, and more than once, he thought he'd been spotted by someone. He'd spend the next day with a clenching feeling in his chest, but nothing ever came of it. They didn't know it was him, and that made him laugh. Why would anyone suspect Freddy Krueger, the nice man from Elm Street who built the rocking horses and paid for ice cream on hot days?

So he teased them – sometimes he didn't kill the children in the boiler room, sometimes he just knocked them out with the chloroform he'd begun to carry with him on a daily basis and then he stabbed them with the claws and left them there. Once or twice he had allowed his clawed shadow to loom up on a building opposite where children played in the evenings, but he never let himself be _seen_.

The Springwood Slasher, they were calling him now. He liked that. It sounded good. He didn't get the same sort of thrill from leaving the mutilated bodies to be found, but it was worth it to see an article about himself in the papers the following day. He pinned them to the walls of his special room, and he smiled to himself when he saw them.

Loretta insisted that they sit Katherine down and explain to her about what was going on, about why she was no longer allowed to stay out after dark and about why the children had to obey a new curfew.

"There's a very bad man going around the town," said Loretta. "He's cruel and he wants to do things to hurt children. We don't want him to do anything to hurt you. So I don't want you talking to strangers, Katherine. I want you to make sure that me or Daddy can see you at all times. If anyone tries to make you go with them, say 'no' as loud as you can, okay?"

"What sort of things does he want to do to children?" asked Katherine, eyes wide with fear.

"I don't think you should know," said Freddy.

"She needs to know, Fred," said Loretta, and Freddy scowled at her. He didn't want his daughter to be corrupted – to get an idea in her head and turn out as messed up as he was.

"He wants to do awful, awful things, Katherine – he – he stabs children, with knives. I'm not telling you this to scare you, but so that you are aware. But you must remember to stay with us always, and not to go near strangers, okay?"

"Yeah, he's a real bad guy. They say he's got knives attached to his fingers – gloves like claws – and he chases you like the Big Bad Wolf, and then he eats you up like one of the three little piggies," said Freddy, wiggling his eyebrows at Katherine, who giggled, terror apparently forgotten. Good. He could at least make light of the situation. He didn't want his daughter living in fear.

Everything was going very well for him. He was even working a little bit of genuine overtime, to save enough money for a trip to Disneyland. He thought he'd soon have worked out all his frustrations – he was barely angry any more, and if he was, he buried it deep inside. Soon he wouldn't have to kill any more. Soon he wouldn't need to. Soon he would be normal. He was relaxed, and happy, and unknowingly careless. And maybe things could have gone well, and maybe things could have been normal, and maybe his anger would have stayed buried, if it wasn't for his carelessness.

* * *

I am _so bad_ at updating this. I swear it'll be done before Christmas. Please bear with me!


	18. Freddy Underwood

**part xviii: freddy underwood**

* * *

The day things changed was a hot day. It was nearing summer, and the birds were singing in the trees. The street was pleasantly warm and the flowers were blooming, but Freddy was reading through his scrapbook in the basement, until he heard a knock at the door.

He looked up, and slowly got up from his chair and went to answer it, opening the door just a crack. There was Loretta, squeezing Katherine's shoulders. His daughter was holding a plate of cookies and a glass of milk, and looking up at him with a big smile on her face.

"She baked them for you," said Loretta. "We had a feeling that you might like them." Katherine giggled.

"Well," said Freddy, taking a step outside the door and closing it behind him, "isn't that thoughtful of you? C'mere." He crouched down and enveloped his little girl in a big hug, and she gave a quiet squeal.

"Don't spill the milk, Daddy!"

"Right!" laughed Freddy, and sat back on his haunches. "Are these all for me?" He lifted a cookie and popped it in his mouth. It was delicious, and the thought that his daughter had baked it specially for him warmed his heart. She always knew just what he wanted.

"Well..." said Katherine, and Freddy grinned.

"You want one, too, huh?" She nodded excitedly, and Loretta laughed. "Go on, then, baby. And does Mommy want one, I wonder?"

"I'm saving room for dinner," said Loretta, as Freddy took the plate and the glass off Katherine, leaving her hands free to take a cookie for herself. She munched it while Freddy nuzzled her hair and then stood up.

"Good idea," he said. "I heard it was spaghetti tonight." He winked at her, and she frowned.

"Well, we'll see," she said, sounding displeased as Katherine cried, "Yay! I love spaghetti!"

"You'll just have to see what you get," said Freddy, and turned to take his milk and cookies into his room. "Mommy might have something special planned."

"Daddy, will you come a play with me?" asked Katherine's voice from the other side of the door as Freddy set the milk and cookies on the table.

"No, Katherine," he heard Loretta say, "Daddy's busy working right now."

"Then will you play with me?"

"No, I have to prepare the ingredients for your spaghetti tonight," she sighed.

"But, Mom-_my_..."

Freddy poked his head around the door. "I can play with you, sweetheart."

"Don't you have work to do?" asked Loretta, and Freddy looked at her, then down at Katherine, who was wide eyed and pleading, and then he looked at his wife again, and he smiled.

"I can do it later. Gotta make time for my special little girl, haven't I? And besides, if I'm gonna eat all those cookies I could do with a little exercise." He patted his stomach, and Katherine laughed.

"You're not fat, Daddy. Kristy Myers' daddy is fat."

"If you're sure..." said Loretta doubtfully, and Freddy nodded. "Well, just make sure you're not having so much fun that you don't hear me when I call you for dinner, all right?" She ruffled Katherine's hair.

"Okay, Mommy!"

"What d'you want to play, baby?" asked Freddy, as Loretta began to make her way up the basement steps.

"Tag!" said Katherine excitedly, and she tapped Freddy's knee then skipped a few paces away from him, giggling. "You're it!"

Freddy hesitated for a moment, and wondered if he should lock the door to his special room. But his daughter was waiting for him expectantly, and, really, if she was outside and Loretta was cooking dinner...

"You better run!" said Freddy, and he came after her with his arms outstretched, laughing. Katherine gasped and scampered up the steps to the back yard with Freddy following her. The sunlight was just lovely, and as Freddy watched his daughter run around amidst the flowers of their garden and listened to her laugh, he wondered how he had gotten so lucky, and how the garden had changed so much from when he was a kid. This was good and this was normal and this was how everything was supposed to be and he loved it.

Katherine giggled as she tried to get away from him – she ran around the bird bath and over the flower beds, and though she wasn't really allowed to trample on them, Freddy couldn't find it in his heart to scold her. He was too busy enjoying her little giggles, and watching the joy flickering in her eyes.

She evaded him for quite a while – well, he let her evade him, because where was in the fun in the game if she thought she'd be caught by him right away? And then, when she seemed tired out by it all, he knelt down and stretched his arms out, a grin stretching across his face from ear to ear. "Come to Daddy!"

She laughed, and she did, skipping over to him and panting a little, worn out from the game, and looking a little pleased that she had an excuse to stop running away. Freddy pulled her close to him and nuzzled her hair – and then they both jolted at the sound of a terrified scream.

It was coming from the basement. Katherine broke away from him and Freddy stood up. He felt his stomach almost physically drop. It couldn't be what he thought it was, no, that was ridiculous. His imagination was running away with him. It was something totally innocent – like Loretta had burned the spaghetti sauce or something. That sounded like something she would do. There was no way she could have – she'd couldn't possibly have seen – she wouldn't – he always kept it locked...

Except he hadn't. He'd left the door open and he'd gone to play in the garden, and Loretta, his wife, the woman who was supposed to honour him and to fucking obey him had gone in there and she had _seen_, hadn't she? His stomach began to clench and burn with a hot anger – he had told her never to go into his special room; she knew that was where he worked and she knew it was nothing to do with her.

But Katherine was scared by the sound of her mother's screams, and Freddy had to squeeze her shoulder reassuringly as he saw Loretta come up the steps. Perhaps it was just burned meat sauce after all... perhaps...

"I won't tell," he heard her say in a wavering voice. _Fucking whore bitch_. Freddy felt something inside of him snap. A vein was throbbing in his head, and he felt himself move across the garden towards her. He didn't know what he was going to do, but he knew it would not be his fault. Loretta was sobbing, and she walked forward to meet him with tears in her eyes. "Oh, God... Fred, please... I won't tell..."

Freddy stared at her, and he could feel himself trembling. He wished he had his glove, but it was in the basement and she had probably seen it and besides, Katherine was watching and – what was he thinking. He couldn't use his glove on Loretta, not his wife, that was sick, that was _wrong_ – but he was angry, so angry, and it was all he could do to force himself to speak to her civilly. "We need to talk... Loretta," he growled. She choked out a sob, and she looked as though she could barely stand up straight.

Freddy realised then he'd never have the normal family life he'd wanted. He was too messed up, too sick, and too angry, and he wasn't sure if he'd ever loved Loretta at all. He didn't feel like her like he did about Katherine... Oh, but he _did_ love Katherine, and she was watching, and he knew now that he hated his bitch of a wife, hated her like he'd hated all those kids, and even if she was the only person who'd eve given him a chance to be normal, that didn't matter now. He didn't want that any more. All he wanted to _do_ was to kill, and if it meant choosing that over Loretta, well... He turned to Katherine – he didn't want her to see, too.

"Go inside, honey," he called, and she hesitated for just a moment before skipping down the basement steps. Good. She was such a good little girl. Loretta didn't seem to care that Katherine was watching; she didn't seem able to hold back her whines – so nasal, Freddy noticed now.

"I won't tell," she repeated, quivering.

"I told you," snarled Freddy, grabbing hold of her shoulders, "never to go into my things. Isn't that right? Isn't that _right_?" He gripped her and shook her, and all she could to was sob pitifully.

"I didn't mean to, Fred..."

"What do you mean? I told you, I told you never to go in there, didn't I? Didn't I? Answer me!"

"Yes, yes," Loretta moaned, "but I was cleaning up... The milk and cookies... I didn't mean to, Fred, I really didn't, and I'm sorry – I won't tell, I won't."

"You _bitch_." He knotted his fingers in her hair and he threw her to the ground, and she looked up at him in fear, scrambling desperately away, trying to get back onto her feet, her chest still heaving with crying. Freddy followed her, shaking his head, his lip curling in a sneer. "I never liked you, d'you know that? I only married you because I felt sorry for you."

"Fred, you don't mean that, I know you don't, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"Know me?" Freddy hissed, and he grabbed hold of her throat. "You don't know me, you never knew me. Look. Look, you saw what's down there. Did you ever suspect? Did you ever wonder why I was always so busy? Did you ever care about me? Did you ever _listen_?" His voice was rising, and he knew the neighbours would hear but he didn't care.

"I'm sorry, Fred, I won't tell..."

"Fucking right you won't," snarled Freddy, and he wrapped his hands around her neck squeezing as tight as he could. He didn't stop to think if there was anything about it he might regret. She gurgled, pitifully, and he jerked her head back and forth and tried to make her _shut up_. And at last she did – for once – and then he heard something that made him sick.

"Mommy!"

Freddy froze, and he stepped back, letting Loretta's body fall to the ground. He turned, and his little girl was there, with tears welling in her eyes, and he didn't know what to tell her. That her father was just a sick, twisted bastard? That he didn't know how to love, except for her? That he wanted to protect her and that he couldn't stop himself from killing? So he did the only thing he knew a child could understand, and though it made him feel awful, he realised that there was no point in pretending to ever have been normal or happy at all.

"Don't worry, baby. Mommy just had to take her Medicine for snooping in Daddy's special work." He knelt down in front of Katherine, and she gave a tiny little sob, and it hurt Freddy. He didn't know how to make it better for her, but his head was beginning to clear and he knew he didn't want to make it worse for himself. "But you won't tell, will you?"

She shook her head, lip trembling. "I won't tell."

_God_.

He was Mr Underwood.

No.

He was worse than Mr Underwood.

"Good," said Freddy, reached out a hand to stroke her cheek. "Now, let's go inside and have spaghetti, how about that, huh?"

Katherine sniffled and nodded, and Freddy turned her around, prodding her in the direction of the house, following close behind so that she would walk and so that she wouldn't turn back. She wouldn't remember this, he told himself. No-one could remember being five years old; she would forget soon enough and then it would be all right.


	19. Freddy's Coming For You

**part xix: freddy's coming for you**

* * *

Everything that happened after that seemed to happen in a blur. Freddy laid the table and poured Katherine lemonade, and they sat down to eat the dinner his dead wife had made not ten minutes before. It was still warm in the saucepan, but Freddy didn't want to think about it. And he didn't want Katherine to think about it, either. So he tried to talk to her about something, something ridiculous, and when he looked back on it, he couldn't remember what it was. It had been about her dolls or about a picture she had painted at school or something. She didn't seem very hungry, but she had to eat, Freddy told her, or she wouldn't get any dessert.

And then there was a knock at the door, and a shout – "Police: open up!" – and banging and hammering and yelling and Freddy remembered telling Katherine to go upstairs. He didn't want the men shouting around his little girl – in fact, he didn't want them in his house at all, but he couldn't hold them off because there were at least five of them and they were bigger than him and they came in without invitation and before he could do anything he'd found himself in handcuffs.

A police officer was speaking in his ear, loud and droning, informing him of his arrest, and Freddy bucked against him, kicking out, knocking his head back into the man's face. He heard something crunch and hoped he'd broken his nose. A hand slammed his – Freddy's – face into the wall, and Freddy snarled.

"Get the fuck off of me!" he screamed, as his mouth filled with blood. "I haven't done anything!"

"You really talk like that in front of your daughter?" another voice said. "Guess I'm not surprised."

And when Freddy looked up he could see out of the corner of his eye Katherine, and she was standing on the stairs clutching at the railing, her eyes wide and frightened.

"It's all right, sweetheart," Freddy told her thickly, "Daddy just has to go away for a while."

"Yeah, your daddy might not be coming back," he heard another voice say, and he saw Katherine being lifted by someone in a dark uniform. He struggled against the arms holding him against the wall, but they were so much bigger than he was, and so much stronger, and there was nothing he could do.

"You're taking her away?! You can't take my daughter away from me! What am I supposed to have done?! Let me go! Let – me – go!"

But they didn't, and the next thing he knew he was in a police station, and they were telling him how a neighbour had heard him arguing with his wife in the garden. She had come to investigate, and found the dead body. Freddy hissed at himself. He should have hidden it, he _could _have hidden it; he was good at hiding things. But he hadn't wanted to upset Katherine. And then they had called the police, who had shown up and taken his daughter away from him. His daughter, who was the only living thing he'd ever loved properly, and who had loved him back, and he would never get to see her again. They had taken her, and they said she wasn't speaking; she wasn't saying anything – they'd upset her, they'd frightened her, the fuckers.

It was probably that bitch with the gremlin baby. Freddy had seen it playing in the yard just yesterday. He still didn't know if it was a boy or a girl. He would have to kill it later, if he ever got out. He'd have to show that whore just how it _felt_ to have your child taken away from you.

The police informed him that their officers had searched the house and they'd found his secret room in the basement. The cop who was supposed to be interrogating him was a young woman, but she had a hard face, and he could tell she thought she was used to dealing with people like him. She told him he was going to be locked up for a very long time. Freddy clenched his fists so that his nails dug into his palms and he didn't say anything.

"Your daughter will be taken to the Springwood Orphanage," said the policewoman, and Freddy growled quietly. "She'll find a good, stable home there. She's very traumatised by the day's events, understandably. We'll be running medical checks on her to test for abuse." Freddy's teeth clenched at the idea of someone else touching his baby, but there was nothing he could do.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself? Anything we can give in evidence?" asked the officer, and Freddy stared at a spot on the wall. There were a few moments of silence, and then she stood up and turned to leave.

"Yeah," said Freddy. "Nice ass – bitch."

The officer shook her head and left the room, and the next thing Freddy knew he'd found himself in a grimy white cell, on top of a dirty bunk bed and sitting on a thin and lumpy mattress, staring at the wall. The man on the bunk below him was twice his size – a lump of a thing with stubble for hair, barely able to fit into his jumpsuit.

"I killed a man," he grunted at Freddy, when Freddy was first forced inside and stood staring at the wall, by way of breaking the silence. "What'd you do, fish?"

"Your mother," said Freddy, and the man punched him in the face and they didn't say very much to each other after that.

Freddy sat through trial after trial and he heard how the people of the neighbourhood were _so heartbroken_ by what had happened, how their children were _sweet little angels _and were at peace now, and how they wanted _justice_. Freddy heard that he should be locked up for an eternity and how that wouldn't even be enough for him, and he leered down at one of the mother who couldn't hold it together and burst into tears after being held back from leaping into his stand and trying to strangle him.

He wondered if he knew what brats their little pigs of children were. And he swore that if he ever got out while he was alive he'd finish the rest of them. They wanted his Katherine to suffer. They wanted her to have to live without her daddy. They were as selfish and as rotten as the kids from elementary school – they'd never grown up, most of them, and Freddy hated every single one of them.

He waited for his conviction but it never came. Instead, his door was opened one day and he was told he was free to go and that though the officers told him that thought he was scum and wanted to see him rot in hell (because they had found his special room; he knew they had), they couldn't do anything because they'd forgotten to sign the search warrant.

Freddy laughed to himself about that – it was funny, really, how stupid the law could be. They didn't realise, like he did now, that he hadn't been killing for any _good_ reason. He had just been killing because killing was fun, and there was no way to put an end to it, and now that he was free, he was just able to do it more effectively.

He was pleased to be reunited with his glove, though he didn't want to use it on the people who'd imprisoned him, because then they'd just arrest him for straight up murder, and that would be no fun at all. Besides, they could defend themselves, and Freddy wasn't sure he'd come off better in a fight. But he wanted to hurt them, and hurt them badly – he wanted to make sure they felt what he had felt, down through the years, and know how badly it hurt to have their children taken away from them.

It was laughably easy. Freddy had thought they would have learned, but they didn't – their kids were still standing outside school, waiting to be picked up. Perhaps they had thought Freddy wouldn't try anything funny – perhaps they had thought he had Learned His Lesson, like a good little boy, and just wanted to fit in and wanted to be good and normal but he didn't. Not any more. He liked that people were scared of him, that they pulled their children away from him in the streets and avoided him when he went to the supermarket.

But he hated that they taunted him, because he was sick of it, and they were just like kids in that way. Nothing ever changed. They were still the kids – or near enough – that he had grown up with, and he still hated them. He was lonely, again, without his family and without his little Katherine, and he was still angry, so angry, and all it took was one more night of bloodshed before the kids – parents now – turned on him the way they had when he was a little boy.

Back then it had cut him to his very soul, but he doubted he had one of those left now. Now it was just... a flesh wound, yes. But it was an annoying one, all the same, one that itched and festered and wouldn't leave him the fuck alone.

He took his glove and he made his way into town, and he crept into the houses while the kids and their parents were in bed, and he didn't waste any time in killing their children while they slept. By the time they woke up – if they did, because some of them slept right through it, so loving were they – he was long gone, and their children had been taken away from them. They were Freddy's children now. He rifled through their things, their family albums, and took what he could find. Photographs, little mementos of how they had been in life, of how their family had been. He had had a family like that once.

One of the girls, Freddy hadn't been able to kill that night. They had a dog that slept outside the front door, a vicious thing that was as long as Freddy was tall, its teeth matching Freddy's knives for size. She was the daughter of the man who had taken his Katherine away from him; he had found that out with a little research and a little poking around. He hadn't been able to get to her in the night but he had found out that she had a grandmother, and she liked to bring her cookies, and she often walked home alone. Freddy liked to watch her when she did this – it was only a couple of blocks away, but it was far enough that she would be out of sight of her parents and the old woman, though he didn't really care who saw. It wasn't as though it was a secret any more.

Even the kids were taunting him, now, with their rhymes. He had heard them, as he lurked outside the school, hidden behind an outhouse and waiting to catch one of them on their own. They all knew now that it was him, the nice man with the rocking horses and the ice cream – the Springwood Slasher, and he knew they were frightened of him. They were singing when they thought he couldn't hear them. They didn't _mean_ to taunt him, but their parents had probably told them to be aware that he was out there, and to stay away from him, and probably that if they weren't careful he would come and kill them in their sleep. They didn't know it had nothing to do with being careful and all to do with who their parents were and who got in his way. But kids were often not fond of sticking to the rules their parents had laid out for them, and they probably liked the thrill of the danger they got from their chants. It wasn't like it had been back in school, though. The Son of a Hundred Maniacs chant had been designed to hurt him, he knew, but this new one... He rather liked it. It was to the tune of _Buckle My Shoe_, and they sang it while skipping rope, and it began: "_One, two, Freddy's coming for you_..."

And he hummed it while he approached the little girl walking home from her grandmother's from behind and knocked her out with the chloroform soaked rag he kept on his person at all times.

He took her back to the boiler room, of course. She was carrying a little dolly, rather like the one his Katherine used to have. The one Katherine had had stolen from her; the one that had started this whole thing off. Well, no, that was wrong. It was Mr Underwood who had started the whole thing off – it was the kids at elementary school – it was his whore of a mother – it was the hundred lunatics who'd fathered him – it was Freddy himself. He was twisted and he was evil and he knew it, and in a way he way sort of proud of that. At least he had something to be – at least he _hadn't_ ended up a deadbeat alcoholic rotting in some basement.

"I'll have _that_," said Freddy, snatching the doll from the girl's limp hands and throwing into the stove next to the boiler, where the flames licked it up.

He was practically living in his boiler room now, now that he had nothing for him back at his house. He could hear Katherine's laughter echoing in the halls, and he didn't want that. He couldn't bear what the still-human part of his mind was doing to him (because the rest of it wasn't human, was it, it was cold and devoid of love but it was more than human, so much more), so he had just left and pretended that all he had left was the boiler room. All he had left was the boiler room and his work bag and his glove and his work jacket and the brown fedora he always wore to work.

Those and his Christmas sweater. He wore it, he told himself, because he liked the colours. It was... stylish, and he liked how soft it was. But really he was wearing it because it smelled like home, and it smelled like Katherine, and he wanted so badly for it to be her wrapped around him rather than the stupid stripy sweater. But it did cheer him up a little, when he closed his eyes and pretended that the part of him that loved Katherine was the only part of him. Then he could pretend they were still at home, and that it was Christmas, and that he was holding her close and she was telling him about her dolls and there was the smell of gingerbread and cinnamon coming from downstairs, and he had never killed her mother and they were still a normal, happy family. The Kruegers were just a normal, happy family.

He wished.

But it wasn't so, and all he had to do with his time was smoke cigarette after cigarette and sharpen his blades. He contemplated making new ones, but he never got around to it. He killed the last little girl, and then he finally got around to killing her big, dumb dog, and taking her picture from the family album. She was so young, so pretty. Freddy took the photos back to the boiler room, where he was keeping his scrapbook with the articles and the pictures now, and he liked to look through it and smile to himself about what he had done.


	20. The Shapes

**part xx: the shapes**

* * *

He wasn't sure if there was anything left to kill. He liked the back of the photograph, and savoured the taste before putting her with his other children. Perhaps he should leave town. Perhaps he could go wherever he wanted, and see the world, like he'd always wanted to. He didn't have a college education, but he knew that that wasn't important now. He could bring Katherine with him. He could take her, from the orphanage – from those sick perverts he didn't want laying hands on his precious little girl – and he could take all his money and they could go to Disneyland, just like she had wanted. Money didn't seem to matter any more. He just wanted to make his little girl happy.

But then _they_ came. The parents. They knew where he worked and they knew where he lived and they had hunted him down. They had followed him to the boiler room and he heard the engines of their cars drawing up outside, and he froze. No-one ever visited him. It could not be good. But he would have to talk to them, if that was what they wanted, because he knew they knew he was there. He could see them just outside of the windows, and he knew that they could see inside.

He stood up and put his hat on. If he was going to face them, he was going to do it properly. _My name is Freddy Krueger and I killed all of your children, and what are you going to do about it, huh?_ But before he left the boiler room, he slipped his glove on, just for good measure. If he was going back to prison, he wanted to go because he'd killed as many people as possible. Maybe they'd even put him in a lunatic asylum this time. That would be lovely, he mused – like coming full circle. Like going back home.

But he didn't even reach the door. He could hear them yelling and clambering outside – shouting slurs, insults, and for what possible reason? To hurt his feelings? 'Son of a Hundred Maniacs' wasn't among the taunts they shouted: Freddy would have known if it was, he would have known the sound of it a mile away. He had chanted it to himself, over and over again, through long, painful nights at the mercy of his own razor, and the words had a pleasant sort of rhythm.

Ah, but they were yelling, Freddy realised, as the window crashed open and a bottle with a fiery rag flew through it, to justify their own actions. Their own murder. Maybe they thought it was right and maybe they thought it was justified, and Freddy couldn't deny them that, but it made him livid. They couldn't _see_, they never could see, how this was all their own fucking fault. But the floor and the table were soaked with fuel he had never bothered to clean up, and as soon as the bottle hit, the entire worktop caught flame.

And then more of the makeshift bombs came crashing through the windows, and Freddy stared, petrified, at the fire that was ripping and tearing its way through his life's work. He couldn't move. He was stiff and frozen to the spot, unable to look away as everything he had done went up in flames. And then the fire came for him.

He stood and stared as it licked his ankles, and he didn't even bother going for the door. He was sure they would have blocked it from the outside. All he could do was wait. He'd heard that smoke from a fire would kill the victims before the actual flames did their damage, but that didn't seem to be the case. The fire was roaring up his leg, burning his pants off – and then he couldn't keep still any longer.

God, it _burned_. He didn't feel pain any more but this was pretty damn close. His thighs were searing in almost-agony and he dropped to his knees and the fire spread to his chest, and he heard the voices outside laugh and jeer. He moaned to himself, rolling around, trying to beat the flames off of himself, but the floor was fire now, too. It was everywhere, and he couldn't get away from it, and, oh, he was _angry_.

He scrambled to his feet and stared out of the window, to the people peering in, to the people watching him burn. The flames still rose all around him, feeding on him, singeing his skin and his flesh, and they were watching, and they wanted this to happen, and they were doing nothing for him.

Freddy shrieked in pain and in fury, and it sounded inhuman and he wasn't surprised. "I'll get them!" he shouted. "All of them! I'll find your children and I'll kill them all!"

His flesh and his blood and his bones were burning, and he was pulled to his knees, howling. His hand with the glove was shaking; he could see the blades reflecting the flames and the blood bubbling on the gleaming surface as his skin curled, blackened and charred, revealing red, raw flesh underneath.

"I'll find them and I'll make them burn with me!"

He was sure they were empty threats; he knew he was dying, and he knew this day would come eventually. He had known that the parents would find him, that they would fail to understand as they always had done, and that he couldn't live forever.

Oh, but he wanted to. He wanted badly to live forever, or at least long enough to make sure those people he hated were mutilated in the most painful way he could imagine. And maybe that was the reason for what happened next.

He waited for his heart to stop beating. He waited for the flames to fade and for the darkness to take their place, licking at the side of his eyes until it swallowed him up, but that didn't happen. What happened was that the flames engulfed his vision, and everything became hazy, and he wasn't sure if this was death or not but it _hurt_, and nothing had hurt him in a long time and he thought that maybe he was in Hell. But from out of the fire swam dark shapes. They had no defined form – at least none that he could see – and they spoke with him.

It was as though they were a voice in his head, and he thought that perhaps they were – perhaps he was hallucinating with the pain and the heat, but that didn't matter. He was too frenzied and too crazed to care about whether or not what he saw was real, and when the shaped spoke with him, he answered them. They knew what he wanted, they told him, and he wondered if they were the Devil, or Beelzebub, come to take him down to the pit. But he didn't care. If it was an eternity of this he was to suffer, he may as well make deals with demons and devils.

"I want it all!" he roared. He was burning. He was dying. And he wanted blood. He wanted the lives and the souls of their children, and he wanted to see them suffer. He wanted to inflict the pain he'd felt on the people who had made him this way, a thousand time over, again and again, for the rest of eternity.

And the shapes promised him that he could. If he opened up to them, they said, he would be "forever". So he did, and he didn't care if he had signed his soul over to the Devil or if he was destined to burn in Hell for the rest of eternity – because he could cope with the pain, he could handle the heat, and as for the Devil, well... The Devil had been inside of him all along.

The parents of Springwood had seen the murderer of their children die in the fire they had started, but they had failed to take into account the fire they had started long ago, and the fire that had been burning in Freddy from the time he was a small boy. They didn't realise that it was that fire that had caused their children's deaths. It wasn't their fault, of course, but they had burned to death a man who failed to realise that. And as they tucked their children in at night, they kissed them softly on the forehead and they swore that Freddy wasn't coming for them any longer, that they were safe now, and that Mommy and Daddy had made sure no-one would hurt them.

And as Freddy watched their children sleep, he laughed. He had awoken in darkness, but he had found a new world. It wasn't the world he had lived in, or the world he had failed to love. It wasn't the world he had killed in, or the world that had killed him back. It wasn't really a _real_ world, but it was real enough, if one only closed their eyes. And it had no rules, no boundaries, and everything – _everything_ – was permitted.

Freddy awoke in the darkness and he found himself alone. His skin was still charred from the fire, his clothes singed, curled and blackened, but the pain was gone. This wasn't Hell, not even close. Freddy knew what this was. They had told him so, the Shapes. It was the world inside of a child's head, where their fear festered at night, and where Freddy could find them. The Shapes told him, they whispered in his head, that he could blur the line between dreams and reality. They told him that they had a very special job for him. They wanted him to kill for them.

And Freddy wanted to kill, too. He looked down at his glove, still sharp, still beautiful, and he laughed. It was a deep laugh, a proper laugh, one that echoed in the darkness and would echo in the nightmares of children for decades to come.

He stepped forward into his new world, and he understood. He understood that he was sick and he was twisted and he was evil, and that was the sort of thing that could never die. He wasn't supposed to feel pain, and he wasn't supposed to be killed. It turned out that death, after all, was just a flesh wound.

_The End_

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This was posted a little later than planned, but things got a bit hectic round Christmas. Oops! Anyway, here's the final chapter, and I want to say thanks so much to Darkness Takes Over for reviewing nearly every chapter and being so encouraging! :) So I hope this ending is satisfactory, and I hope to be writing more in the new year (and hopefully updating more regularly!).


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